Scholars of early medieval societies are paying increasing attention to topics such as mobility, travel, networks and communication. Within this context, the Anglo-Saxons’ movements, both on a local scale and across long distances, continue to be fruitfully explored. War, trade, pilgrimage, penance, exile, missionary work, pastoral care, church councils, royal assemblies, diplomatic missions and many other activities motivated early medieval travel. Books also often travelled with people, and the British Library’s ‘Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms’ exhibition, which gave rise to this collection of essays, provided numerous examples of manuscripts that, by the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, had already travelled fairly long distances. Narrative sources sometimes refer to travellers taking books with them on their journeys and occasionally, as in the case of Codex Amiatinus, those very books still survive. Explicit mention of books being requested or sent can be found in surviving correspondence, as with the epistolary circles of the English missionaries Boniface and Lull, who in the course of the eighth century solicited and received books from several correspondents in England, both men and women, while carrying out their missionary work in the eastern Frankish territories. The books that reached the missionaries on the Continent probably continued to travel with them, as revealed in the account of Boniface’s martyrdom of 754 contained in the earliest Life of the saint, written by Willibald shortly afterwards. This refers to a conversation that Boniface had with Lull, his follower and designated successor as bishop of Mainz, before setting out on his last journey to Frisia. Boniface told his disciple to prepare everything that they would need for their trip, not forgetting to place in the chest where his books were kept a linen sheet in which his body could be wrapped, as he knew that the time of his death was approaching:‘Tuo cunta prudentissimo provide consilio, quae in hoc nostro sint usui itenere copulanda; sed et lintheum quo meum decrepitum involvatur corpus, in theca librorum meorum repone’(emphasis mine).