Isabeau de Bavière’s Books: A Reassessment

This article reexamines the books and reading habits of Isabeau de Bavière, queen of France (r. 1385–1422). Since Auguste Vallet de Viriville’s 1858 work on the queen’s library, relatively little attention has been devoted to furthering our understanding of what the queen read and her participation in literary communities. In revisiting the queen’s book collection, I have two aims: first, to consider what the content and chronology of her reading reveals about Isabeau as a participant in the literary culture of her time; and second, to explore in greater depth how Isabeau used books and literature to establish relationships and form a community. Contextualizing the queen’s reading practices with those of her contemporaries’ also allows us to estimate the true size of her book collection. This closer scrutiny of Isabeau’s books sheds new light on her active role in her reading community at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century.