The Pre-Modern Manuscript Trade and its Consequences, ca. 1890–1945

Laura Cleaver, Danielle Magnusson, Hannah Morcos, Angéline Rais

• Publisher: Arc Humanities Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN:
  9781802702071
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: European Medieval History

This collection brings together current research into the development of the market for pre-modern manuscripts. Between 1890 and 1945 thousands of manuscripts made in Europe before 1600 appeared on the market. Many entered the collections in which they have remained, shaping where and how we encounter the books today. These collections included libraries that bear their founders' names, as well as national and regional public libraries. The choices of the super-rich shaped their collections and determined what was available to those with fewer resources. In addition, wealthy collectors sponsored scholarship on their manuscripts and participated in exhibitions, raising the profile of some books. This volume examines the collectors, dealers, and scholars who engaged with pre-modern books, and the cultural context of the manuscript trade in this era.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I DEALERS AND THE MARKET
• Chapter 1. Bernard Quaritch Ltd., Bibliophilic Clubs, and the Trade in Medieval Manuscripts ca. 1878–1939
• Chapter 2. Selling Middle English Manuscripts to North America up to 1945
• Chapter 3. Dollars and Drama: Early English Plays and the American Book Trade 1906–1926
• Chapter 4. The Fates of the Manuscripts from the Vallicelliana Library of Rome at the End of the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 5. Fuelling the Market: Sales from Austrian monasteries 1919–1938
• Chapter 6. Jacques Rosenthal’s Marketing Strategies: An Analysis of the Bibliotheca medii aevi manuscripta (1925 and 1928)
• Chapter 7. From Drawing Room to Sale-room: Albums of Medieval Manuscript Cuttings in the 1920s
• Chapter 8. Buying and Breaking with Philip and Otto
• Part II BUYERS
• Chapter 9. Illuminations from Northern and Central Italy in the Collection of the Dealer Vittorio Forti
• Chapter 10. The One That Got Away: How Lord Brotherton Lost Out on a Book and Founded a Library
• Chapter 11. Becoming a Gentleman Collector: Alfred Chester Beatty’s Influence on Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian’s Manuscript Collection
• Chapter 12. A Private Library and the Making of the Middle Ages in Florence: Piero Ginori Conti’s Collection
• Chapter 13. The “Calenzio Deal” and the Auction of the Oldest Vallicelliana Codices, 1874–1916
• Chapter 14. The Acquisitions of Florentine Public Libraries 1900–1935
• Chapter 15. Private Purses and “National” Possessions: The French Acquisition from the Phillipps Library (1908)
• Chapter 16. Provenance Research on Lost Manuscripts: The Case of Louvain University Library (1919–1940)
• Chapter 17. To Buy, or Not to Buy? Market Forces and the Making of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Collections
• Chapter 18. Women as Owners and Collectors in de Ricci’s Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada
• Chapter 19. “A most fascinating and dangerous pursuit”: The Book Collecting of Isabella Stewart Gardner
• Chapter 20. The Collector, Edith Beatty (1886–1952)
• Chapter 21. Paul Durrieu (1855–1925): Art Collecting and Scholarly Expertise
• Part III SCHOLARLY AND CREATIVE ENGAGEMENTS
• Chapter 22. Seymour de Ricci and William Roberts: Recorders and Analysts of the Market
• Chapter 23. Stories of an Antiquary: The Legacy of M. R. James
• Chapter 24. Phillipps MS 24275 and the Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Historiography of Bede’s Martyrology
• Chapter 25. Manuscripts and Meaning: The Biography and Value of John Ruskin’s Blue Psalter, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (KBR), MS IV 1013
• Chapter 26. Translation, Tradition, and Tracing the History of an Irish Manuscript Primer
• Chapter 27. The Bedford Psalter and Hours: Making and Un-making National Identity in the Acquisition of an “English” Manuscript
• Chapter 28. The National Collection That Never Was: The “Failure” of Henry Yates Thompson’s Experimental National Gallery Exhibition
• Chapter 29. Exhibiting Italian Books Outside Italy: Tammaro De Marinis and the 1926 Exposition du livre italien
• Chapter 30. A Reference Book for Scholars and Collectors: Eric Millar’s English Illuminated Manuscripts (1926–1928)
• Conclusion: Consequences
• Select Bibliography
• Index of Pre-Modern Manuscripts
• Index of People