'Exquisite... intelligent illuminating mischievous ... delightful The Times The acclaimed
author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts introduces us to the extraordinary keepers and
companions of medieval manuscripts over a thousand years of history The illuminated
manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We
are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. But we
generally think much less about the countless men and women who made collected and preserved
them through the centuries and to whom they owe their existence. 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 were participants in 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 which 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.
