La 4e de couverture indique : "In the late Middle Ages, the time of Charles the Bold and Hans Memling, Bruges was a metropolis of books. One of the central figures in the international book trade was Colard Mansion (active from 1457 to 1484). Initially, in addition to being a valued translator, Mansion was primarily a highly sought-after copyist of luxury manuscripts, but when the art of printing made its entrée in Europe in 1455, he saw his chance and became one of the first in the Low Countries to specialise in the new medium of printed books. In no time, he became one of the most important book entrepreneurs in Bruges and environs. In this book, manuscripts, illuminated incunabula and rare prints bring Mansion's innovative book business back to life. Nearly fifty specialists from around the world offer unique insights into Mansion's life, many aspects of which are shrouded in mystery. Among other things they describe the gradual transition from manuscript to print, explain workshop practices and publishers' strategies, and provide contextual information about late-medieval printmaking and the creation of an impressive oeuvre of literary editions in the vernacular. Mansion developed a brand that remained solid for centuries. This book holds the key to understanding why."

Among the more interesting incunabula preserved in the Salle de la Réserve of the Bibliothèque National in Paris are the apparently unique copies of two editions, very similar in content, of a work entitled Les Adevineaux amoureux. In much more comprehensive form Les Adevineaux amoureux is preserved in a manuscript belonging to the Musée Conde at Chantilly. All three texts, in medieval French, appear to date from the 1470s. The present work, Amorous Games, is a critical edition of Les Adevineaux amoureux. Amorous Games is a miscellany whose principal unifying force is the compiler's aim to provide a manual of conversation and entertainment for polite society. Included are series of questions and answers belonging to the well-established medieval tradition of the "Demandes amoureuses"; a very large number of riddles, mainly folk riddles; and "venditions en amours," little poems that apparently came into bing as part of a social game. Students of medieval French literature, particularly those with a penchant for some of the minor genres, will find new material in the Amorous Games. Folklorists will discover what is probably the largest collection of riddles bequeathed to us by medieval France and also much that is of value to specialists in the proverb and folk tale. For this critical edition of Les Adevineaux amoureux Professor Hassell has selected the Chantilly manuscript, because it is the most complete and also because it had not yet been published. The Appendix contains the text of the more complete of the two incunabula and the significant variants appearing in the other fifteenth-century printed edition. The manuscript text has been collated with that of the incunabula, and copious notes and an index to the riddles have been supplied. In his introduction Professor Hassell discusses in detail the major classes and subclasses of the riddle, drawing on the work of Petsch, Taylor, Abrahams, and other scholars of the genre.