An important step forward was taken by Geoffrey Shepherd in the production of his edition of parts six and seven of the work, in which he showed that the author's reading was extensive. Shepherd linked the author's interests with those of a generation of late twelfth-century English and French scholars at the University of Paris, including Peter the Cantor and Stephen Langton. Shepherd suggested that the author was a scholarly man, though writing in English in the provinces, who was kept up to date with what was said and being written in the centres of learning of his day.