IN THE FINAL CHAPTER OF HER MOST RE CENT BOOK, Manuscript and Print in London, c.1475–1530, Julia Boffey writes of the chronicler Robert Fabyan that he ‘resided in London for over fifty years and wrote in different contexts and forms about his city's constitution and history’. Like Fabyan, Julia's own writing crosses different contexts and forms, both material and literary. This border-crossing is not only a hallmark of her own scholarship but has also made new forms of inquiry possible for scholars of all kinds. From her earliest work on Middle English lyrics to her most recent publications about the print reception of medieval authors, Julia's writing is typified by a mode of expression that is subtly understated, guiding the reader through arguments that are always searching, frequently groundbreaking and very often inspirational. We mention these qualities at the outset of this introduction because it is impossible to write about Julia's scholarship without simultaneously acknowledging her collegiality. Her generosity and kindness as a scholar are evident in her numerous collaborative endeavours, from co-authored journal articles to co-edited collections of essays and to indispensable works of reference such as The New Index of Middle English Verse.

For Julia, excellent scholarship is a conversation. It is work that engages, listens and responds to other endeavours in the field. This commitment to the health of the wider scholarly community is of course visible in other areas of her curriculum vitae. The many awards and fellowships she has been granted are a reflection of her service to the profession, and while too numerous to list here in full, they are a testament to her substantial contributions to the field. She has held visiting professorships at the University of Colorado (1998), University of Connecticut (2012) and Keio University (2018), and in 2005 she was an instructor on the prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. She has been the recipient of many fellowships from the Huntington Library, San Marino (2011 and 2016) to the Houghton Library, Harvard (2011), and has been a British Academy Research Reader (1995–97) and a British Academy/ Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow (2011).