The Book of Kells is the most spectacular of a group of manuscripts created in Ireland and northern Britain between the seventh and tenth centuries, a period when Irish monasticism was in the vanguard of Christian culture. It is a masterpiece of medieval art--a brilliantly illuminated copy of the four Gospels with full-page illustrations of Christ, the Virgin and the Evangelists and a wealth of smaller decorative painting. The strange, half-surrealist imagination displayed in its pages, the impeccable technique and the very fine state of preservation make it an object of endless fascination. The editor has chosen the most important of the large illustrations plus a series of enlargements showing the almost unbelievable minuteness of the detail--arabesques, interlaced patterns, weird and witty monsters and grotesqueries. He has also provided a scholarly analysis of these exuberant inventions, the artists, the text and the writing, and a full account of its historical background.--From publisher description.