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Hidden Hands : The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers - Mary Wellesley

Hidden Hands

The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers

By: Mary Wellesley

Paperback | 30 August 2022 | Edition Number 1

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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.

Without manuscripts, she shows, many historical figures would be lost to us, as well as those of lower social status, women and people of colour, their stories erased, and the remnants of their labours destroyed.

From the Cuthbert Bible, to works including those by the Beowulf poet, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Sir Thomas Malory, Chaucer, the Paston Letters and Shakespeare, Mary Wellesley describes the production and preservation of these priceless objects.

With an insistent emphasis on the early role of women as authors and artists and illustrated with over fifty colour plates, Hidden Hands is an important contribution to our understanding of literature and history.

About the Author

Mary Wellesley studied English Language and Literature at Lincoln College, Oxford, before gaining a PhD from University College, London in 2017. She is now a full time free-lance writer but continues to teach courses on medieval language and literature as part of the British Library's Adult Learning programme. Her work has appeared in The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement, amongst others.
Industry Reviews
Authors may write their books, but they don''t make them. Here is the chance to meet the women and men who actually made the cathedrals and palaces of medieval English literature, from the St Cuthbert Gospel to the Luttrell Psalter, from Beowulf to Chaucer. Mary Wellesley tells us about the authors, but more important, she introduces us to the artists, the ink-makers, vellum preparers and pigment grinders - and all the others who contributed their different gifts to these great communal achievements. To read this book is to meet the makers of the English literary middle ages.

Hidden Hands is a delight - immersive, conversational, and intensely visual, full of gorgeous illustrations and shimmering description. Mary Wellesley explores the lives of medieval manuscripts, and the men and - importantly - women who made them, with deep learning and unmistakable love.

- Helen Castor

It is very seldom you read a book which offers gifts on every page, every paragraph, every sentence. I learned more, and was more delighted, reading Hidden Hands that the last dozen books I read. Her book brings you into the heart's core of literature and I loved it.

In an age moving ever more quickly away from the physical book, Hidden Hands conjures up in vivid detail the pleasures of reading and making manuscripts. Mary Wellesley's joy in telling the stories of books long lost and found, and voices forgotten and recovered, is palpable on every page. I finished this book with a burning desire to get back to the archives.

With her richly detailed, personal, multi-layered and unexpected stories about manuscripts and their makers - scribes and patrons, illuminators and parchment-makers - Mary Wellesley brings vividly before us anonymous and forgotten figures, several of them women. Writing con amore, she celebrates the sensuous processes involved and chronicles the vicissitudes of the works' survival: this is a warm, enthralling and original contribution to the history of the book.

Fascinating, well-researched and (pardon the pun) illuminating. - The Countryman Mag

It is intensely personal. It wears its learning lightly. It chats easily and informally to the reader. It conveys a mass of arcane but fascinating information... Manuscripts establish a personal bond across the centuries between [the author] and the men and women who made them. Few people have described the experience so eloquently. The range is remarkable... wonderful. - The Spectator

You Can Find This Book In

Non-FictionLiterature, Poetry & PlaysHistory & Criticism of LiteratureGeneral Literary StudiesClassical Literary StudiesHistoryEarliest Times to Present DayEarly History from 500 to 1500Medieval HistoryBargainsNon-Fiction BargainsHistory Bargains
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