Illuminated manuscripts are a source of information on how men and women went about the everyday business of earning a living in the Middle Ages - on the land, through trade and commerce, as craftsmen and manufacturers, or in what we now regard as the professions. Many of the scenes shown in this illustrated study are works of art in their own right, or are from manuscripts famous for the quality of their illumination. Patricia Basing provides a commentary, relating the evidence of each illustration to its historical context, explaining the relationship between pictures and text and discussing the background to manuscript production in the middle ages. Patricia Basing is a curator in the department of manuscripts at The British Library.