It's not just people who lose a little something as they get older. It can happen to books, too.

This was for long the standard manual for editors of Middle English documents. And it deserved its reputation; it had information on all the major topics needed by students: Middle English itself, paleography (dating the age and source of the manuscript), collating the text, textual criticism (seeking the ancestral text behind the manuscript), publishing an edition, and more. All were explained clearly and well.

But consider this: the method of collation involved three by five cards and hand-written notes. No computers. Not only was it vastly more work than doing it on a computer, there was no way to get statistics about the results, and making corrections was a horrid task. Almost everything about the collation and preparation of a published edition suffers from the fact that the book was written before personal computers. So a student must find a new method to deal with these tasks.

When this book came out, it deserved four or five stars. The advance of technology has cost it a lot. It's still worth having, though. ( )