This is a wonderful and important volume, a model for editing such account books, and one whose importance cannot possibly be appreciated without being able to page back and forth at will; I printed out my electronic review copy to do so. That said, let me repeat that this is an impressive undertaking.
I first encountered Eleanor of Montfort's account book in Margaret Wade Labarge's A Baronial Household in the Thirteenth Century, published in 1965. So much has been published since, and much of it for Britain has been taken into account in Wilkinson's comparisons: from Judith Bennett on Ale, Beer and Brewsters in 1996 and Richard Unger's study of beer in 2004, to C. M. Woolgar's studies of Food and the Senses, including the collection Food in Medieval England, which he edited with D. Serjeantson and T. Waldon (Oxford, 2006).
In addition to describing the account roll, Wilkinson's introduction discusses a series of topics beginning with Eleanor of Montfort's life, and her itinerary for 1265, which is what is revealed by the accounts. Included are the residences, size and organization of her household, officials and servants, religious practice, hospitality and communication, and the impact of Evesham. Sizes of membranes in the roll are given. The text itself is presented in order of the membranes in the roll, first the face of membrane 1, then the dorse of that membrane, and so on. There is a continuous series of numbered Latin texts, each immediately followed by its translation. (This is much easier and probably more page-saving than attempting side-by-side text and translation.) On the front side of each membrane, the central items include not only food, kitchen, and purchases for the stable, but specific utensils, food, and drink. Clothing and communications and almsgiving tend to be found on the dorsal sides. As Wilkinson suggests in her introduction, a gradual reduction of the amounts of food and wine delivered suggests the increasingly straitened circumstances of the Countess and her household over the course of spring, summer, and fall 1265; they use jack-rabbits, deer's tails, and even what is described as "plunder."
Without being able to check against an original, but given the attestations to that effect, I judge the transcription as impeccable. This may be inferred by the editor's leaving what might be a scribe's ambiguous terminology. In no. 169, pepper appears to be purchased for using on the foals (pro pullanis), and the reverse happens in no. 33, in which a meadow is acquired near Kenilworth for the Countess's hens (ad pullos). A few other quibbles of this sort may be mentioned. A payment for malting grain was probably something closer to maltura than multura (the latter the measure of payment to a miller of grain). Is amigdalorum to be translated as almonds as opposed to marzipan, halvah or nougat, or some other sweet nutty confection? Were sheep purchased in a marsh or a market? And what does it mean to be seeking a crane in a well in no. 345? I do not doubt thatmurilegos (lit. "wall leaper"?) is a cat, as in no. 31, but why in no. 342 is the same term translated as "mouse-catcher"? Such items as these are infrequent. Thus do I end as I started: This is a most impressive volume.