A compilation of Old Testament, liturgical and computistical texts that was written in northern France in the third quarter of the ninth century had apparently crossed the English Channel by the early tenth century when certain letters were retraced by an Anglo-Saxon hand. However, the volume ended up in Normandy, and subsequent additions suggest that it was there in the first half of the twelfth century and probably by 1100. This chapter deals with the books that were passed between England and the European Continent during the period c. 871 - c.1100. These include a copy of Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae, and the first stratum of the Leofric Missal. Anglo-Saxon use of imported books is variously attested by occasional glosses such as when a Continental copy of Prosper was supplied with a nearly continuous gloss in Old English. By the second half of the tenth century, the traffic in books had become a two-way street.

Unlike manuscripts, which were produced in England and Scotland as well as on the Continent, no printed books were produced on native soil before William Caxton set up his shop in Westminster in 1476. This chapter treats England and Scotland separately in the discussion of the importation of books. They were separate countries, had different foreign alliances, different trade routes and looked to different intellectual centres. The imported books themselves underline these differences. If the individual centres of printing for patterns of importation to England are examined, Venice emerges as the leading supplier of books, followed by Paris, Basel, Cologne, Lyons, Strasbourg and Nuremberg. For Scotland, Venice dominates in both importation and production in the 1480s, but in the 1490s is almost on a par with Paris. There is no dramatic leap in the 1490s, but rather a sharp, then steady, rise in imports from France and Germany after 1500.

No account of the history of the manuscript book in Britain in the fifteenth century would be complete without a discussion of the extent to which foreigners were involved in the native book trade, and of the several manuscripts written and illuminated abroad which were imported at this time. This chapter distinguishes five classes of production and/or importation of books. First, foreign illuminators may have themselves migrated to work in England. Secondly, manuscripts may have been made abroad and then imported and sold in England speculatively to buyers who had not specifically commissioned them. Thirdly, owners may have acquired manuscripts abroad and brought them back to England. Fourthly, manuscripts may have been sent from abroad as gifts. Fifthly, manuscripts may have been specially commissioned abroad by owners who remained in or returned to England. In the later Middle Ages, certain major patrons attached illuminators to themselves as household servants, the Duke de Berry being a well-known example.