Hachette has published a monograph by Mary Wellesley – ‘Hidden Hands. The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers’ (2021), concerned with the production and history of manuscripts. The book relates the history of the Beowulf manuscript, the works by Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Sir Thomas Malory, Geoffrey Chaucer, the Pastons letters and Shakespeare. ‘Hidden Hands‘ tells stories about the artisans, artists, authors, scribes, readers, patrons and art collectors who have shaped the history of manuscripts important for English and European history.
This conference, hosted by the Centre for Medieval Studies, is devoted to the study of manuscript fragments, and what these fragments can tell us about lost books, medieval and post-medieval book history, and textual history. siglum.uw.edu.pl/…/fragments-conference-online-programme-3 Research questions may include, but are not limited to: What difference does the manuscript fragment make to the textual tradition of the text it contains? What can manuscript fragments tell us about the lost literature of the Middle Ages and about changing tastes? How can we use the evidence from manuscript fragments to piece together the lost book from which it derives […]