
Introductions
- The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: 1. The Early Middle Ages, ed. Michael Lapidge; 2, The Later Middle Ages, ed. Nigel Morgan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
- Alexander, Jonathan J. G. Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994)
- Brown, Michelle P. Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (London: British Library, 1994)
- Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago, 1992)
- Dain, Alphonse. Les manuscrits, 2d ed. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1964)
- Lilian M. C. Randall. Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley: University of California, 1966)
- Parkes, M. B. English Cursive Book Hands (London: Scolar Press, 1969)
Editions
- Benson, Larry D., ed. The Riverside Chaucer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987)
- Heinrichs, Kathleen. The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive Vol. 3: Oxford, Oriel College, MS 79 (O) [Windows CD-ROM], (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2005)
- Rigg, A. G. A Glastonbury Miscellany of the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: OUP, 1968)
- Riley, H. T., ed. Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis (London: Rolls Series, 1849-1862)
Journals
- Anglia
- Codicologica
- Journal of the Early Book Society
- Manuscripta
- Medium Aevum
- Speculum
- The Library
Articles and Book Chapters
- Boffey, Julia Middle English Lyrics and Manuscripts, in A Companion to the Middle English Lyric, ed. Thomas G. Duncan (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), 1-19
- Hanna, Ralph.'Middle English Books and Middle English Literary History', Modern Philology 102 (2004), 157-178
- Hardman, Phillipa. 'A Mediaeval "Library in Parvo"', Medium Aevum 47 (1978), 262-273
- Hardman, Phillipa. 'Compiling the Nation: Fifteenth-Century Miscellany Manuscripts', in Nation, Court and Culture, ed. Helen Cooney (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), 50-69
- Jones, Leslie W. "Pricking Manuscripts, the Instruments and their Significance," Speculum 21 (1946), 389-403
Keiser, George R. 'More Light on the Life and Milieu of Robert Thornton', Studies in Bibliography 36 (1983), 111-119
- Keiser, G. R. 'MS Rawlinson A.393: Another Findern Manuscript', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 7 (1980), 445-448
- Pearsall, Derek. 'The Whole Book: Late Medieval English Manuscript Miscellanies and their Modern Interpreters', in Imagining the Book, ed. Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2005), 17-30
- Prescott, Andrew. 'Some Literary Contexts of the Cooke and Regius Manuscripts', in Freemasonry in Music and Literature, The Canonbury Papers vol.2, ed. T. Stewart (London: Canonbury Masonic Research Centre, 2005), 43-77
- Robbins, Rossell Hope, 'The Findern Anthology', PMLA 69 (1954), 610-642
- Robbins, Rossell Hope. 'Medical Manuscripts in Middle English', Speculum 45 (1970) 393-415
- Robinson, P. R. 'The Booklet: A Self-Contained Unit in Composite Manuscripts', Codicologica 3 (1980), 46-69
- Shonk, Timothy A. 'A Study of the Auchinleck Manuscript: Bookmen and Bookmaking in the Early Fourteenth Century' Speculum 60 (1985) 71-91
- Turville-Petre, Thorlac. 'Poems by Chaucer in John Harpur's Psalter', SAC 21 (1999), 301-14
- Voigts, Linda Ehrsam. 'The "Sloane Group": Related Scientific and Medical Manuscripts from the Fifteenth Century in the Sloane Collection', British Library Journal 16 (1990) 26-57
Books
- Beadle, Richard and Owen, A. E. B. The Findern Manuscript: Cambridge University Library MS Ff.1.6 (London: Scolar Press, 1977)
- Beadle, Richard. New Science out of Old Books, ed. Richard Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995)
- Connolloy, Margaret. John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998)
- Friedman, John B. Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995)
- Griffiths, Jeremy and Pearsall, Derek. Book Production and Publishing in Britain: 1375-1475 (Cambridge: CUP, 1989)
- Hanna, Ralph. Pursuing History (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1996)
- Hardman, Phillipa. The Heege Manuscript: A Facsimile of National Library of Scotland MS Advocates 19.3.1 (Leeds: Leeds Texts and Monographs, 2000)
- Nichols, Stephen and Wenzel, Siegfired, eds. The Whole Book (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1997)
- Pearsall, Derek, ed. Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983)
- Pearsall, Derek, ed. Studies in the Vernon Manuscript (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990)
- Starkey, Kathryn. Reading the Medieval Book (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005)
- Thompson, John J. Robert Thornton and the London Thornton Manuscript: British Library Additional 31042 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987)
- Turville-Petre, Thorlac. The Alliterative Revival (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1977)
- Turville-Petre, Thorlac. England the Nation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)
- Woolf, Rosemary. The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968)
Reference
- Emden, A. B. Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to 1500 (Oxford: OUP, 1957)
- Emden, A. B. Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge: CUP, 1963)
- de Ricci, Seymour and W. J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the USA and Canada (New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1935)
Online Resources
International Association of Paper Historians - The IPH is an association dedicated to standardizing the study of paper. The website also provides links to databases of watermarks, including C. M. Briquet's very influential dictionary of watermarks, Les Filigranes.
Austria
Belgium
Britain
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
France
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Netherlands
Norway
Portugal
Russia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United States
Paleography Courses
- Anglo-Norman.org's Online Paleography Course - Not just for Anglo-Norman, this website is very comprehensive, covering hands from the early middle ages to the eighteenth century.
- Cours d'initiation la paleographie Medievale et Moderne - A basic introduction to paleography, in French and focused on later French hands.
- Curso de Paleografia Latino Hispano-Americana - As far as I can tell, a comprehensive survey of the development of European hands in the Middle Ages.
- Julia Bolton Holloway's Essay on Codicology - A very detailed essay with a good introduction on many issues involved in the study of medieval books. Professor Holloway's website also provides a lot of information on Middle English culture and Julian of Norwich in particular.
- English Handwriting 1500-1700 - A comprehensive course on Early Modern English handwriting with 28 lessons, each focused on a different text.
Glossary
Anglicana - A particular type of textura which developed in England; it is most easily distinguished in the two-compartment 'a' form (as opposed to the single compartment 'a' typical of continental scripts). Like most modern typefaces, the font you see here uses the two-compartment 'a' form.
codex - The modern book form, comprised of pages pasted or bound together, usually with an outside binding. This is opposed to the roll or scroll, the more common form in pre-medieval European societies.
currens - Writing in which there are no spaces between words
cursiva - A family of scripts in which an entire word can be written without lifting the pen from the page.
flesh side - A parchment folio has two sides: the flesh side and the hair side. Skin originally has two sides, one that faces the inside of the animal and another that originally faced the outside. When skin is converted to parchment, the flesh side becomes smoother and the hair side is thicker; one can often distinguish individual follicles on the flesh side of a folio.
folio - A leaf in a manuscript--that is, both the recto and verso pages which appear to be the same sheet of paper (or parchment) in the bound book. Usually shortened to fol. or f.
hair side - See flesh side.
laid lines - The usually faint lines which marked the baseline for a line of text on the page. Although rare in modern printed books and common in modern notebooks, medieval readers expected text to be framed by these lines (someone, I forget who, suggested that medieval readers felt text was 'naked' without these lines).
palimpsest - When one text has been erased and another has been written on top of it.
prickings - Small holes made in the margins of a page, which were the guides for laid lines
recto - When a book is opened, the recto appears on the right side (I always remember this by thinking that the 'r' in 'recto' is for 'right'). This is the face of the folio.
rubrication - Rubrication involves adding at least one stroke of ink, usually red, to letters, usually capitals and initial letters. Sometimes rubrication involves writing a whole word in red--this can be seen in the title name of Generides in Morgan Library MS M 876.
textura - The ornate, careful, calligraphic script often known as 'gothic'.
verso - When a book is opened, the verso appears on the left side. This is the back of the folio.
