The Manuscripts Club

September 25, 2023
De Hamel (Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts) takes an expansive look at the history of creating and collecting ancient and medieval manuscripts since the 11th century. He profiles generations of collectors, some of whom “have held the same manuscripts in their hands, centuries apart.” These include 11th-century monk St. Anselm, whose well-documented life provides insight into the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages; 16th-century illustrator Simon Bening, who became famous for continuing to practice the art of illumination (the decoration of pages with intricate hand-drawn illustrations) well after the invention of the printing press; disgraced 19th-century collector Constantine Simonides, a manuscript forger who “conjur up whatever Greek manuscripts people desired”; 19th-century classicist Theodor Mommsen, who pioneered the recreation of ancient texts through trace remains in surviving sources; and American banking tycoon J. Pierpont Morgan’s famously enigmatic curator, Belle da Costa Greene, who “singlehandedly... created the fashion for millionaire manuscript libraries.” De Hamel’s fascination with rare manuscripts shines throughout, such as when he imagines using his own copy of the Codex Gregorianus, a set of legal codes of the Roman Empire, to attract the attention of the famously preoccupied Mommsen. This erudite yet accessible study is sure to entertain bibliophiles.

October 1, 2023
A millennium of production, patronage, scholarship, and rediscovery of medieval manuscripts. Manuscript devotees get the star treatment in this fascinating and multilayered art history, a natural follow-up to de Hamel's award-winning previous book, Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts. The "club" includes 12 historical figures featured in short biographical chapters. The author begins with Saint Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. In the 15th century, Vespasiano da Bisticci, "the most successful bookseller in Europe," turned Renaissance Italy's rediscovery of ancient classics into a business. Simon Bening, active in 16th-century Bruges, is one of the few manuscript illuminators whose name we know. Sir Robert Cotton, an early modern antiquary, owned hundreds of manuscripts, and his classification numbers are still used by the British Library. Rabbi David Oppenheim (1664-1736) acquired Hebrew manuscripts, and Jean-Joseph Rive authored "the most bad-tempered book on manuscripts ever written" in 1789. Other notable club members: Sir Frederic Madden, the first Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum; notorious forger Constantine Simonides; Theodor Mommsen, the only manuscript scholar to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; and Belle da Costa Greene, director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, "the finest library of illuminated manuscripts outside Europe." This tour through manuscript history is dense with facts and dates but never dry. De Hamel, manuscript consultant for Sotheby's since 1975, is a charming and knowledgeable guide, and his "visits" with his subjects--tours of their residences or libraries--brings their obsessions to vivid life. By the end, readers are likely to agree that "illuminated manuscripts are the most entrancing of artefacts, conveyors both of texts and of some of the most refined art ever painted," as well as "windows into human aspirations, emotions and sense of beauty." The text features four-color illustrations throughout. An impressive immersion in the storied precincts of art connoisseurship.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from October 1, 2023

This is the 12th book, and the 11th on manuscripts, by de Hamel (Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts), who, for 25 years, worked at Sotheby's auction house obtaining, cataloging, and arranging the sale of Western medieval manuscripts. He then became librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, overseeing its exquisite collection of medieval manuscripts. de Hamel offers a continuously intriguing and surprisingly lively account of manuscript collectors from St. Anselm through Belle da Costa Greene (J. Pierpont Morgan's librarian and eventual director of his library). Also featured in this gallery of book lovers is a 19th-century forger. De Hamel's book is lavishly illustrated and unfailingly engaging. It is a love letter to collectors across nearly 10 centuries, written by an expert, imbued with passion for his subject. VERDICT This book will fly off the shelves. Once readers look inside, they will be hooked. In every respect, this title is a winner.--David Keymer

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2023
Before the printing press, handwritten and illustrated manuscripts were crucial to transmitting knowledge across Europe and remain treasured cultural artifacts. De Hamel, academic librarian and author of the acclaimed Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (2017), takes us on a journey of "metaphorical time travel," visiting 12 members of a centuries-spanning fellowship of devotees, an abbot, a prince, a rabbi, and a forger among them. Focusing on why and how each person followed their shared obsession, de Hamel traces historical trends, such as a shift from religious to secular purposes for collecting. Lively biographical and personality sketches, imagined conversations, and you-were-there travelogues to subjects' homes and workplaces balance abundant scholarly detail on manuscript creation, acquisition, provenance, and connoisseurship. The journey ends in early twentieth-century New York with the flamboyant Belle Greene, a young African American woman, personal librarian to the insatiable collector, J. Pierpont Morgan, and powerhouse behind the founding of the renowned Morgan Library. De Hamel's encyclopedic knowledge and irrepressible enthusiasm for his subject animate the whole; he's a member of the club.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.