This study presents the first full history of Old English poetic mise-en-page, drawing its approach from the fields of literary criticism, art history, metrics, palaeography, and the history of the book. Paying special attention to lineation, this book surveys the layout of poetry from the earliest Latin writings in England, to modern editions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It argues that the vernacular verse page is not, as has often been assumed, merely constrained by linguistic status. Rather, the layout of Old English poetry is shown to be the result of engaged scribal and editorial choices, and one of a set of tools used to meets readers’ needs and to express identities. Old English verse is not laid out "like prose,” but like Old English verse.

The importance of metrical analysis to the broad work of textual criticism and literary analysis cannot be overstated. In the thirty years since the publication of R. D. Fulk’s A History of Old English Meter, metrical theory has been brought to bear on questions of poetic style, dating and literary history, linguistics and language history, editing practice, manuscript analysis and scribal practice. The essays in this collection include contributions from both new scholars and established metrists. They focus on the application of metrical study to literary criticism and manuscript studies, engaging with current debate and offering new perspectives on the crucial role of metre to Old English scholarship.