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The Book of Kells: Proceedings of a Conference at Trinity College Dublin, 6-9 September 1992, ed. Felicity O'Mahony (Aldershot: Scolar Press; Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1994). xiv + 488 pp.; 191 plates. ISBN o-85967-967-5. L75.oo. Robert D. Stevick, The Earliest Irish and English Bookarts: Visual and Poetic Forms before A.D. 1000 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). xiv + 282 pp.; 116 plates. ISBN o- 8122-3220-8. L75.00.
These two books are concerned in very different ways with Hiberno-Saxon art. The papers from the Dublin conference range widely: from Peter Harbison's four pages on the relationship between the Book of Kells and Irish high crosses, to Jennifer O'Reilly's 54-page discussion of early biblical exegesis and the manuscript's Lucan genealogy; and from Anthony Cains's note on the identification of animal species used in the making of parchment, to Martin Werner's consideration of the programme of decoration in the Kells Gospels. The main focus is on the Kells Gospels, but the book also includes discussions of stone carving and metalwork which have an independent value. Robert Stevick's book, by contrast, is concerned with the much narrower subject of the mathematical principles behind the ornamental pages of Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts; he argues that the same principles govern the layout of...