The Vernon manuscript is the largest and in many ways the most important vernacular manuscript of medieval England. Produced in the West Midlands in the late 14th century, at a time when English was in the process of consolidating its hold over Latin and Anglo-Norman as the dominant literary language, it contains a mass of religious writing of all kinds, from pious romances and fables to technical and quasi-mystical treatises. It was, in the intention of its makers, a guide to the soul's health and is to the modern reader an incomparable index to late medieval English spirituality and religious ideas. The publication of a facsimile of the manuscript in 1987 was a mark of its significance for all those who study the English Middle Ages.