[SCA-AS] [tmr-l@wmich.edu: TMR 07.05.03 Roberts, Guide to Scripts (Marsden)]

Sat May 12 01:05:27 CDT 2007

Crossposted from The Medieval Review

Roberts, Jane. Guide to Scripts Used in English Writings up to
1500. London: The British Library, 2005. Pp. xv, 294. ISBN:
0712348840.

   Reviewed by Richard Marsden
        University of Nottingham
        Richard.Marsden at nottingham.ac.uk

Let us get it clear from the outset that this book is not a mere
"guide"--that term makes the academic's heart sink, for there are
too many of the species about, usually thin, soft-focused and
cursory; rather, this can fairly claim to be an "introductory
textbook" of English palaeography in the medieval period. As such,
it is overdue and very welcome, for there has up to now been no
"one-stop shop" for this subject. Those many of us who, though non-
specialists in palaeography, regularly teach the subject in courses
on various aspects of early medieval English culture know only too
well the problem of finding suitable books to recommend. We end up
producing, very laboriously, our own booklets of photocopies made
from microfilms, books or, where they are available, online
resources. Here at last we have a good range of facsimiles in one
place, with exhaustive analysis and commentary. The material is
accessible but the approach scholarly, and the hand (to use an
appropriate metaphor) of a teacher who knows the material
intimately is evident throughout. One should never underestimate
the amount of sustained scholarship which goes into a serious
textbook of this sort. With this resource, teaching "manuscripts"
can actually be a pleasure, and an education.

There are 294 pages, with just over one hundred black-and-white
facsimiles, eight of which are reproduced also in colour in a
separate section. The main contents are as follows:

I. General Introduction
II. Insular Background
III. Anglo-Saxon Minuscule
IV. English Caroline Minuscule
V. Protogothic
VI. The Gothic System of Scripts: Gothic Textualis
VII. The Gothic System of Scripts: Anglicana
VIII. The Gothic System of Scripts: Secretary
IX. Afterword

The General Introduction gives an excellent overview of the
development of English script, its historical context, and is full
of essential information about the complexities of naming scripts,
the terminology used to describe them, and the use of
abbreviations. The Afterword rounds off the story with some remarks
on the introduction of printing, the relative status of Latin and
English, and lay literacy.

That story--of the evolution of the scripts--is told in the seven
middle sections, II?VIII. Each has a introduction of three or four
pages (that is, some 3?4000 words in this large-format book), which
places the main script-type in its historical context, describes
its characteristic features and variations, and so on. These essays
are excellent in their detail and lucidity and constitute the main
strength of the book. Though the subject is ostensibly English
writing (mostly in forms of the English language, but also in
Latin), sufficient information is provided in section II, on the
Insular Background, to provide essential guidance on the Roman and
Irish scripts out of which peculiarly English writing developed.
All this is set out with clarity, and these pages now offer the
best account available of the palaeography of the Anglo-Saxon
period. After the introductory pages, there follow in each section
the illustrative plates, between four and thirteen of them (the
highest number being in section III). They are numbered
continuously across section boundaries (1?58). The transcription
opposite each facsimile is not restricted to an extract but is
complete--text in both Old or Middle English and (if there is any)
Latin is given, along with all punctuation, corrections, glosses,
marginalia and rubrics. The accompanying commentary gives a
detailed analysis of the scripts, punctuation and lay-out, and
offers essential contextual and historical information. The detail
which is cumulatively built up about each manuscript page is
impressive: each repays a considerable amount of study time.

Most of the illustrative manuscripts are naturally from the
Additional, Cotton, Harley and Royal collections in the British
Library, but there is a small number also from other libraries. The
latter include pages from the Exeter Book, the Stockholm Codex
Aureus (a page with Old English additions), the Old English Bede in
Tanner 10, Genesis B in Junius 11, Ormulum in Junius
1, Barbour's The Bruce in the same library's G. 23, the
Morte Arthure in Lincoln, Cathedral Library 91, and
Troilus and Criseyde in Cambridge, St John's College L. 1;
the last plate in the book is a page from House of Fame in
Fairfax 16, written in the fifteenth century, with seventeenth
century additions. The British Library material includes pages from
the Lindisfarne Gospels (the last page, with Aldred's colophon),
the Hexateuch in Cotton Claudius B. iv, the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle in Cotton Tiberius B. iv, the Ancrene Riwle in
Cotton Titus D. viii, Hoccleve's The Regement of Princes in
Harley 4866 (the page with a portrait of Chaucer), Lydgate's
Horns Away in Harley 2255, and the York Plays in Additional
35290. Whole-page reproductions are nearly always given, with an
indication of the percentage reduction in size from the original.
Line-numbers are supplied immediately to the right of each page to
facilitate reference. The quality of the reproductions is generally
excellent, though there are a few puzzling exceptions, a page from
the Peterborough Chronicle being one of them.

Despite what seems, superficially, to be a straightforward
structure, the book in fact has idiosyncrasies which take some
getting used to, although that is not adverse criticism of a
textbook, which is for sustained study, not occasional hurried
visits. For instance, in most cases, the main plates with their
commentary, around which the narrative is structured, are
supplemented by a further plate. This may be another view of the
same manuscript, but as often as not it is of a different, though
contemporary, manuscript. Apart from an indication of shelf-mark
and title, however, nothing is said about it, and usually the
manuscript index will offer no other location for information. This
at first is confusing, but Roberts' introduction indicates that the
supplementary plates are there to enable readers to pursue further
their study of the particular script under discussion; that is no
bad idea and the supplementary plates are, like the main plates,
provided with line-numbers.

I have one or two quibbles. The two tables of abbreviations on p.
11, for instance, are simply not clear enough (and there seems to
be an error in the lay-out of the first). This problem derives
partly, perhaps, from the large format of the book; that is
essential to allow an adequate display of the manuscript facsimiles
and their attendant commentary but is a less happy environment for
the conventional presentation of information. It is disappointing
also that there is no general index, which need not have taken up
much space. There is of course an index of manuscripts, along with
extremely useful annotated indices, both of the people and of the
places named in the plates and also of the people named in the
commentaries, but that is not much comfort for the student who
wants, say, to know where to discover what "bookhand" or "punctus
elevatus" mean, or who needs quickly to locate an explanation of
"half-uncial." I take the point made by the author in her
introduction, that the contents pages are in themselves an index,
but that is not enough, and I hope that, when the book goes into a
second edition, this lack is remedied.

My admiration for this "Guide to Scripts" grew as I became used to
it. It should be (and surely will be) on the shelf of every early
medievalist. By today's standards, the hardback volume is not too
expensive, but I trust that the British Library will soon issue a
paperback edition also, at a far more attractive price, to ensure
that it is accessible to the many students who desperately need it.

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