A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology: 1450 to 2000

by Peter Beal

This is the first Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology ever to be published. Dealing with the subject of documentation - which affects everyone's lives ( every-day letters, notes, and shopping lists to far-reaching legal instruments, if not autograph literary masterpieces) - Peter Beal defines, in a lively and accessible style, some 1,500 terms relating to manuscripts and their production and use in Britain from 1450 to the present day. The entries, which range in length from one line to nearly a hundred lines each, cover terms defining types of manuscript, their physical features and materials, writing implements, writing surfaces, scribes and other writing agents, scripts, postal markings, and seals, as well as subjects relating to literature, bibliography, archives, paleography, the editing and printing of manuscripts, dating, conservation, and such fields as cartography, commerce, heraldry, law, and military and naval matters. The book includes 96 illustrations
showing many of the features described.

Genres: Reference

478 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

In 1966, Peter Beal, a graduate of the University of Leeds, started work on the Index of English Literary Manuscripts, 1450-1700 (IELM). The first volume of what was originally meant to be a one-year project appeared in 1980. Its two parts covered the years 1450 to 1625 and were followed, in 1987 and 1993, by a further volume in two parts taking the coverage up to 1700. For the first time, English Renaissance scholars had a full catalogue of the manuscripts – autograph and scribal – of the major authors of the period. The Index included writings in verse, prose, dramatic, and miscellaneous works, including letters, documents, books owned, presented, and annotated by the authors, and related items. In 23,000 entries, Peter Beal covered the works of 128 authors – of these two were women: his choice was determined by a decision to base the whole project (further volumes covered the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) around authors with entries in The Concise Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (1974). Each author’s entry begins with a valuable introduction giving an overview of the surviving material.