Julia Boffey, a member of the Early Book Society almost from its inception, died on Friday, September 11, after suffering a long illness. She was instrumental in the organization and running of the early EBS conferences, those in Durham, Dublin, Sheffield (hosted by Norman Blake in 1993), the University of Nottingham (arranged by Helen Phillips in 1995), the University of Wales, Trinity St David’s, Lampeter, organized by William Marx and Janet Burton with Alcuin Blamires in 1997, and the University of Glasgow (hosted by Jeremy Smith 1999). In addition to co-editing Texts and Their Contexts: Papers from the Early Book Society in 1997 with John Scattergood, she reviewed several books for the Journal of the Early Book Society and remained  active, again from its inception, on the editorial board of EBS’s Texts & Transitions series with Brepols; she read every proposal carefully, commented sagely, and most recently oversaw publication of Emily Wingfield’s Scotland’s Royal Women and European Literary Culture, 1424–1587 (Texts & Transitions 14, 2023).

She taught in the department of English at Queen Mary University of London for many years before her retirement in 2022. Her main subject of study was Middle English lyrics along with anthologies, and later, chronicles. Like most EBS members, she was also always interested in the transition from MS to print.  Among her many publications are Manuscripts of English Courtly Love Lyrics in the Middle Ages (1985), Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry, edited with Janet Cowen (1991), London and Europe in the Fifteenth Century, edited with Pamela King (1995), The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, edited with J. Trapp and Douglas Gray (2002), Fifteenth-Century English Dream Visions: An Anthology (2003), Recording Medieval Lives: Proceedings of the 2005 Harlaxton Symposium, edited with Virginia Davis (2009), A Companion to Fifteenth-Century English Poetry, edited with A. S. G. Edwards (2013), and Henry VII’s London in the Great Chronicle (2019).

Julia also wrote numerous articles and reviews and contributed to books celebrating EBS members, writing on sermon verse in Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print: Essays in Honour of Susan Powell (2013) and on the Great Chronicle of London and related chronicles in Editing and Interpretation of Middle English Texts: Essays in Honour of William Marx (2018). Julia further served on the council of the Harlaxton Symposium and recently proofread and commented on the introduction of Women in Late Medieval Britain: Makers, Patrons and Readers Proceedings of the 2024 Harlaxton Symposium, edited by Martha Driver and Marlene Hennessy.

Generous with her time, gentle in spirit, Julia exemplified, for this writer, grace under pressure in her final illness. She played an active part in a network of scholars, not only befriending but inspiring, others with her brilliant scholarship and interesting insights, which were always kindly and courteously offered.