Manuscript Studies: Social History of Texts

the revaluation and eventually devaluation of manuscripts after the invention of printing; the Dissolution of the monasteries and the dispersal or destruction of libraries (and Henry VIII's creation of the "Royal Collection" by selecting choice items from the monastic libraries); academic libraries discarding manuscript books, sometimes (not always) waiting until printed copies of the same works become available; rise of antiquarianism (in part because linguistic changes were making them unreadable without special training); the re-affirmation of the value (affirmation of a new kind of value) of medieval manuscripts as a result of (and contributing to) the growth of antiquarian interest; Robert Harley's agents rescuing medieval manuscripts from the hoards of waste paper used for the wrapping of goods by fishmongers and bread sellers; with renewed value also comes demand for replicas: legitimate and illegitimate replication (facsimiles; reverent and artistic imitations: I have seen a "medieval" hand-copied and illustrated Modern English story of Jonah for sale in a bookstore; the "Spanish forger" and others producing "fake" medieval manuscripts and selling them as genuine).
I was asked by a reader for my source associating the "agents of Robert Harley" with the rescue of manuscripts from "fishmongers and bread sellers," which proved to be more of a challenge than I at first thought. While I still feel confident that I read this somewhere, it does not seem to be in the Diaries of Humphrey Wanley nor in the Catalogue of the Harleian Collection, where one would expect to find it. Further, by the time of Harley the period of the more "heroic" rescue of medieval manuscripts had mostly passed (although servants looking for paper with which to build a fire continued to be a significant danger). The next page, then, summarizes what we learn from Leland, Bale, and others about the rescue of medieval manuscripts after the Dissolution of the monasteries; fishmongers and bread sellers do not feature prominently, but grocers, soap-sellers, tobacconists, and servants lighting fires do—and there will be a couple of fishmongers involved before the story ends (my summary of these researches are found on the next, The Rescue of Manuscripts, page).

Forward to next page: The early modern "rescue" of manuscripts

[ Course Notes: Introduction ] | [ I. Towards a definition of "manuscript studies" ] | [ I.ii. The four branches of bibliographical study ] | [ I.iii. Topics in the social history of texts ] | I.iii.a The "Rescue" of Medieval Manuscripts from Grocers and Fishmongers | [ II. Diplomatics ] | [ III. Codicology ] | [ III.ii. Decoration and Illumination ] | [ IV. Paleography ] | [ IV.ii. Historical Notes ] | [ IV.iii. Writing Implements ] | [ IV.iv. Letter Formation ] | [ IV.v. Special Characters in English Manuscripts ] | [ IV.vi. Scribal Abbreviations ] | [ IV.vii. Punctuation ] | [ IV.viii. Paleographical sample: William Herebert, OFM (early fourteenth-century England) ] | [ Herebert sample, with transcription ] | [ Herebert sample: enlargement of full page reproduced at high resolution ] | [ V. Textual analysis (James E. Thorpe) ] | [ V.ii. Scribal error ] | [ V.iii. Kinds of edition ] | [ V.iv. Examples of over emendation on insufficient grounds ] | [ VI. Linguistic competence (an example): An Outline History of the English Language ] | [ VII. Libraries and archives: ] | [ VII.ii. British Library Manuscript Collections ] | [ VII.iii. Bodleian Library Manuscript Collections ]

email: Stephen.Reimer@UAlberta.Ca
URL: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~sreimer/ms-course.htm

Manuscript Studies Medieval and Early Modern

I.iii. Topics in the Social History of Texts

Manuscript Studies
Medieval and Early Modern