The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club

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Reading the Posthumous Papers is like taking a walk in excellent company ... an exceptional book, and itself an object worth cherishing. Daniel Brooks, Sunday Telegraph

The people who made, saved and sometimes destroyed medieval manuscripts, over a thousand years of history, from the acclaimed author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts Chapter 46: Records a touching Act of delicate Feeling not unmixed with Pleasantry, achieved and performed by Messrs. Dodson and Fogg Alamy The Duc de Berry at his New Year feast in the January miniature of the Très Riches Heures illuminated by the Limbourg brothers, c.1415. This depiction is illustrated in the book Chapter 39: Mr. Samuel Weller, being intrusted with a Mission of Love, proceeds to execute it; with what Success will hereinafter appear

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Chapter 21: In which the old Man launches forth into his favourite Theme, and relates a Story about a queer Client Looking for a good book? The Manuscripts Club, by Christopher de Hamel, biographizes twelve important figures through history who have collected and preserved rare manuscripts. Regular readers of my review blog might recognize that the last person in the book, Belle de Costa Greene, was the subject of the historical fiction novel I reviewed in 2021, The Personal Librarian, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. This talk is supported by the Friends of the Bodleian. To enjoy closer access to the Bodleian, including exclusive events and priority access to online content, join the Friends today. In this talk we will meet the patrons and illuminators, but also the antiquaries and collectors, the librarians, the dealers, the scholars and a rabbi and even a forger, all brought together by their passion for the books of the Middle Ages. We learn more about manuscripts by knowing the company they have kept throughout history.

Chapter 15: In which is given a faithful Portraiture of two distinguished Persons; and an accurate Description of a public Breakfast in their House and Grounds/which public Breakfast leads to the Recognition of an old Acquaintance, and the Commencement of another Chapter Chapter 3: A new Acquaintance—The Stroller’s Tale—A disagreeable Interruption, and an unpleasant Encounter Author Christopher de Hamel does a really wonderful job of researching these manuscript collectors (and he gives a lot of credit to others for some of this work) and presenting their lives and collecting rigor in an easy-to-read, conversational tone. Each of these lives was fascinating in unique ways and I'd be interested in learning more about all of them. Chapter 38: How Mr. Winkle, when he stepped out of the Frying-pan, walked gently and comfortably into the Fire There was a time when I considered myself more than just an avid reader, but a collector of books. Had I the resources, I have no doubt that I would have collected manuscripts if I'd had the resources (ie money) and so this title really grabbed my attention. I have to admit, though, that I had no idea where this book might go.

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The earliest member of de Hamel’s notional “Manuscripts Club” is Saint Anselm, an 11th-century Benedictine monk who ran the scriptorium in Bec Abbey in Normandy before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. De Hamel walks us through Bec Abbey, vividly capturing the collegiate culture of lending and copying that allowed European scribes to produce and disseminate learned texts. You don’t need to know your psalters from your breviaries to be swept away by his scholarly but conversational style. Reading the Posthumous Papers is like taking a walk in excellent company. FOR a priest, there was not much Christian generosity in the Abbé Jean-Joseph Rive (1730–91). La Chasse aux bibliographes, dated 1789, is the most bad-tempered book on manuscripts ever written.” And Christopher de Hamel should know: he has read the others. Chapter 20: Showing how Dodson and Fogg were Men of Business, and their Clerks Men of pleasure; and how an affecting Interview took place between Mr. Weller and his long-lost Parent; showing also what Choice Spirits assembled at the Magpie and Stump, and what a Capital Chapter the next one will be The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club is a logical sequel to Christopher de Hamel’s Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (2016), in which he introduced readers to some of the most famous handmade books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In this new book he turns his attention to the important question of how such manuscripts have survived the intervening centuries since they were made. The book examines the lives of 11 men and one woman whose actions have played a major part in shaping the fates of medieval books and determining both what survives and where the manuscripts are to be found today. The people selected for de Hamel’s imaginary manuscripts club, inspired by real groups such as the Roxburghe Club and the Grolier Club, are drawn from eight centuries. The subjects have been selected carefully to showcase different kinds of engagements with manuscripts, beginning with the 12th-century monk, Saint Anselm, and the culture of copying and distributing manuscripts that he promoted at the abbey of Le Bec in Normandy and later at Canterbury where he was archbishop. De Hamel imagines meeting his subjects, drawing on surviving places as well as manuscripts. There is, of course, much more evidence for the more recent subjects, so these imagined meetings become rather less speculative as the book progresses. The central premise, however, is that these people who lived in very different times and places would find common ground with de Hamel, the reader and each other in their shared love of manuscripts.

Chapter 36: The chief Features of which will be found to be an authentic Version of the Legend of Prince Bladud, and a most extraordinary Calamity that befell Mr. Winkle Details will be confirmed to registrants ahead of the event. If you have booked to attend online, you will receive a link to the Zoom webinar in the week before the event. Friends of the Bodleian You can also still join BIPC events and webinars and access one-to-one support. See what's available at the British Library in St Pancras or online and in person via BIPCs in libraries across London.

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Christopher de Hamel is a bookworm – or, to be more precise, a manuscript weevil for whom “mere printed books” are modish novelties – who has the rare capacity to turn a scholarly specialism into a humane and humorous adventure. In The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscript Club, silent sessions in libraries are enlivened by De Hamel’s imaginary conversations with long-dead collectors and, at the end of a history that extends across a thousand years, he invites medieval monks, Renaissance princes, Florentine merchants and American industrialists to a notional dinner at which they all unstoppably talk about their shared obsession. Dr Michael Wheeler is a Visiting Professor at the University of Southampton and the author of The Year That Shaped the Victorian Age: Lives, loves and letters of 1845 (Cambridge University Press, 2020).