Manuscripts teem with life. They are not only the stuff of history and literature, but they offer some of the only tangible evidence we have of entire lives, long receded.
Hidden Hands tells the stories of the artisans, artists, scribes and readers, patrons and collectors who made and kept the beautiful, fragile objects that have survived the ravages of fire, water and deliberate destruction to form a picture of both English culture and the wider European culture of which it is part.
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In Preparation
Lost to the Flames: Women Executed by Fire (Quercus)
A Mirror of mans lyfe made by a modest virgine Fransisca Chauesia a Nonne of the cloyster of S. Elizabeth in Spaine burned for the profession of the gospell.
Writing for a lay audience, Mary Wellesley introduces the collaborators – patrons, artists, scribes and authors – whose labour is revealed or hidden in manuscripts. She interweaves her tale of book production with the case histories of many individual works, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the prayer book of Henry VIII, giving anecdotal accounts of the ways in which they were lost or found, preserved or destroyed.
Nov 8, 2022
Hidden Hands
Bodleian Library, Oxford
Disgruntled scribes, protective owners, artists interrupted… manuscripts teem with life. They are not only the stuff of history and literature, but they offer some of the only tangible evidence we have of entire lives, long receded.
In this year’s Annual Lecture, Dr Mary Wellesley will trace the stories of the people who made, loved and sometimes destroyed medieval manuscripts, which are some of the most engaging artefacts ever made by human hands.