Which cathedral library received the Exeter Book from Bishop Leofric in 1072?

The Exeter Cathedral library received the Exeter Book from Bishop Leofric in 1072. The gift is recorded in Leofric’s will, which describes a large English book composed in verse.

The Exeter Book is a late-tenth-century manuscript of Old English poetry and is also known as the Exeter Codex. It contains roughly one-sixth of all surviving Old English poetry, including riddles, religious poems, elegies, and shorter devotional works.

The manuscript is one of the four major surviving collections of Old English poetry. The others are the Vercelli Book in Italy, the Nowell Codex in the British Library, and the Junius Manuscript in Oxford. Unlike those names, “Exeter Book” reflects the manuscript’s institutional home.

The book has survived with losses and replacement leaves at its beginning, but it remains an exceptionally important witness to Anglo-Saxon literature. Its riddles are especially famous because many describe ordinary objects through strikingly indirect imagery.