Richard Sharpe (1954–2020) was Professor of Diplomatic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Wadham College. One of the country’s leading experts on medieval books and libraries, he was also a critic and editor of medieval Latin texts and charters. For thirty years he oversaw a monumental series, the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, which aims to gather, print, and interpret the scattered documentary evidence for book ownership in the Middle Ages.