Books about calligraphy and illumination

• Dondald Jackson: The story of writing.
  A fascinating work by one of Britain's best professional calligraphers. Also describes gold leaf work and the medieval manufacture process.
• Edward Johnston: Writing and Illuminating, and Lettering (London 1906).
  A classic handbook on calligraphy.
• Marc Drogin: Medieval Calligraphy. Allanheld and Schram, Montclair, N.J. 1980, ISBN 0-86043-200-9. (Deals with writing only, not illumination.)
  Lots of photos of medieval manuscripts and full-page sample alphabets, with comments and explanations. This is THE BOOK for all who want to penetrate the writing of the middle ages. Buy it!
• Stan Knight: Historical Scripts. Oak Knoll Press 1998, ISBN 1-884718-56-6.
  Large-format book with lots of b/w photos of manuscripts, often enlarged and very detailed. This is not so much an instruction in how to do calligraphy as an erudite history of styles and manuscripts. While you may not actually read this book from cover to cover, it is very useful as a reference manual and especially the photos nicely supplement e.g. those in Marc Drogin's book.
• Lilian M. C. Randall: Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (UCLA Press, Los Angeles 1966.
  Lots of design ideas from the 12th - 14th centuries.
• George Braziller Publishing Company (One Park Avenue, New York 10016)
  has an excellent and not too expensive series of books about illumination. Drool over titles like The Golden Age of English Manuscript Painting, Italian Renaissance Manuscript Painting, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Painting, Carolingian Painting, Persian Painting, Early Spanish Manuscript Painting, Hebrew Manuscript Painting, Manuscript Painting at the Court of France - The Fourteenth Century, The Golden Age - Manuscript Painting at the time of Jean, Duke of Berry, and others.
• Theodore Menten: The Illuminated Alphabet. Dover Coloring Books, New York 1971.
  Contains several large illuminated initials which are fairly easy to imitate and use.
• Bellerophon Books (36 Anacapa St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101)
  has a series of inexpensive coloring books for children. Many contain useful illuminations, e.g. Unicorns, Talers of great Dragons, A Coloring book of the Middle Ages, A Medieval Alphabet to illuminate, A Coloring Book of Ancient Ireland, Horses and Riding, Chaucer Coloring Book, and others.
• George Bain: Celtic Art - the methods of construction. Dover Publications Ltd, New York 1977.
  An absolute must for those who love Celtic art.