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The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts

Chapter 24: Transcriber's Notes:
By M. R. James
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About This Book

The author surveys how manuscripts were produced, collected, and transmitted across centuries, combining practical guidance for tracing provenance with illustrative case studies from college and abbey libraries. He examines specific volumes — medieval decretals, Greek and patristic texts, and marginal inscriptions — to show how gifts, sales, bequests, and institutional dispersals relocated codices. Attention is paid to scribal hands, ownership marks, and catalog evidence as tools for reconstructing histories. The account emphasizes the resilience of vellum books and encourages students to pursue further archival detective work.

The student may consult the following works:
J. W. Clark: The Care of Books. Cambridge, 1901.
E. A. Savage: Old English Libraries. London, 1911. Containing a useful bibliography.
M. R. James: The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903); the Abbey of St. Edmund at Bury, (1895) and the Catalogues of the MSS. of the Libraries at Eton and at Cambridge, by the same author.
M. Bateson: Catalogue of the Library of Syon Monastery, Isleworth. 1898.
List of Catalogues of English Book Sales, 1676-1906, now in the British Museum. London, 1915.
E. A. Loew: The Beneventan Script. Oxford, 1914.
Th. Gottlieb: Ueber Mittelalterliche Bibliotheken. Leipzig, 1890.
T. Duffus Hardy: Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain. Rolls Series, 1862-71.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND

HELPS FOR STUDENTS OF HISTORY.

No. 1. EPISCOPAL REGISTERS OF ENGLAND AND WALES. By R. C. Fowler, B.A., F.S.A. 6d. net.
No. 2. MUNICIPAL RECORDS. By F. J. C. Hearnshaw, M.A. 6d. net.
No. 3. MEDIEVAL RECKONINGS OF TIME. By Reginald L. Poole, LL.D., Litt.D. 6d. net.
No. 4. THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE. By Charles Johnson. 6d. net.
No. 5. THE CARE OF DOCUMENTS. By Charles Johnson. 6d. net.
No. 6. THE LOGIC OF HISTORY. By C. G. Crump. 8d. net.
No. 7. DOCUMENTS IN THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, DUBLIN. By R. H. Murray, Litt.D. 8d. net.
No. 8. THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION. By Arthur A. Tilley, M.A. 6d. net.

BY SIR A. W. WARD, Litt.D., F.B.A.:—
No. 9. THE PERIOD OF CONGRESSES, I. Introductory. 8d. net.
No. 10. THE PERIOD OF CONGRESSES, II. Vienna and the Second Peace of Paris, 1s. net.
No. 11. THE PERIOD OF CONGRESSES, III. Aix-la-Chapelle to Verona. 1s. net. (Nos. 9, 10, and 11 in one volume, cloth 3s. 6d. net.)
No. 12. SECURITIES OF PEACE. A Retrospect (1848-1914). Paper 2s.; cloth 3s. net.
No. 13. THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE. By Arthur A. Tilley, M.A. 8d. net.
No. 14. HINTS ON THE STUDY OF ENGLISH ECONOMIC HISTORY. By W. Cunningham, D.D., F.B.A., F.S.A. 8d. net.
No. 15. PARISH HISTORY AND RECORDS. By A. Hamilton Thompson, M.A., F.S.A. 8d. net.
No. 16. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF COLONIAL HISTORY. By A. P. Newton, M.A., D.Litt., B.Sc. 6d. net.
No. 17. THE WANDERINGS AND HOMES OF MANUSCRIPTS. By M. R. James, Litt.D., F.B.A. Paper cover, 2s.; cloth boards, 3s. net.
No. 18. ECCLESIASTICAL RECORDS. By the Rev. Claude Jenkins, M.A., Librarian of Lambeth Palace.
No. 19. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN DIPLOMACY. By Carl Russell Fish, Ph.D., Professor of American History in the University of Wisconsin. 1s. net.
No. 20. HINTS ON TRANSLATION FROM LATIN INTO ENGLISH. By Alexander Souter, D.Litt. 6d. net.
No. 21. HINTS ON THE STUDY OF LATIN. (A.D. 125-750.) By Alexander Souter, D.Litt. 8d. net.
No 22. REPORT OF THE HISTORICAL MSS. COMMISSION. By R. A. Roberts., F.R.H.S., Sometime Secretary of the Commission.
(Others to follow.)

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Let not the 400 MSS. given by Coislin to the Abbey of St. Germain des Prés at Paris be quoted against me. They were the collection of a great noble, the Chancellor Séguier, and the library to which they were presented was practically a public one, whose permanence was seemingly assured.

[B] See Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Ævi, ii. 248.

[C] We have its catalogue admirably reproduced by Thomas Hearne, at a time (early in the eighteenth century) when it was rare to find anyone who would take the trouble to make a faithful copy of such a record, with all its erasures and alterations.

[D] Subsequently Theyer, as I said, went on collecting MSS., and finally Charles II. bought the whole lot for the Royal Library.

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

The original text had one page containing the list of Helps on the second page and it was concluded on the last page. The first page was moved to join the last.

Page 96, M. Bateson was small-capped to match the rest of the format of the Bibliography.