The book of hours emerged from its union with the psalter at the very end of the thirteenth century like ripe fruit dropping off a tree, to use Victor Leroquais’s famous simile. Six independent English horae from before 1300 are cited in the Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles; twenty-one others span the 1300s (Nigel Morgan Early Gothic Manuscripts, 1190–1285, 2 vols., London: Harvey Miller, 1982 and 1988; and Lucy Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts, 1285–1385, 2 vols., London: Harvey Miller, 1986). From this wealth of early English material, Kathryn Smith has selected three personally commissioned books spanning the decades 1320–1340, noteworthy for their unusual and varied textual and illustrative contents; and she shows how they shed light on the multiple ways in which books of hours can reflect their owners’ interests. Her study brings these three surprisingly little known but highly idiosyncratic and lavishly illustrated books the attention they fully deserve: the de Lisle Hours (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. G50), the de Bois Hours (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS. 700), and the Neville of Hornby Hours (London, British Library Egerton MS. 2781). Detailed descriptions of all three books occupy appendices; but given the wealth of their...