The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel - 2023 - 624 Pages

The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel - 2023 - 624 Pages

The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. I was dazzled by The Book of Krell I was fortunate to see on a visit to Dublin. De Hame details their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge.

 The Manuscripts Club provides details about men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe This entrancing book describes some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years: a monk in Normandy, a prince of France, a Florentine bookseller, an English antiquary, a rabbi from central Europe, a French priest, a Keeper at the British Museum, a Greek forger, a German polymath, a British connoisseur and the woman who created the most spectacular library in America—all of them members of what Christopher de Hamel calls the Manuscripts Club.

This exhilarating fraternity, and the fellow enthusiasts who come with it, throw new light on how manuscripts have survived and been used by very different kinds of people in many different circumstances. Christopher de Hamel’s unexpected connections and discoveries reveal a passion that crosses the boundaries of time. We understand the manuscripts themselves better by knowing who their keepers and companions have been.

In 1850 (or thereabouts) John Ruskin bought his first manuscript “at a bookseller’s in a back alley.” This was his reaction: “The new worlds which every leaf of this book opened to me, and the joy I had in counting their letters and unravelling their arabesques as if they had all been of beaten gold—as many of them were—cannot be told.” The members of de Hamel’s club share many such wonders, which he brings to us with scholarship, style and a lifetime’s experience. There are numerous beautiful illustrations.

This book is written out of a deep knowledge and passion.

"In he course of a long career at Sotheby's and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably seen and catalogued more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive, and his delight and enthusiasm run through all he writes. He is the author of many books, translated into numerous languages, including A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, The Book in the Cathedral, and Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, which won both the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge" From the publisher