Smarty Pants Podcast

People of the Parchment

The ordinary lives hidden in medieval manuscripts

By Stephanie Bastek | November 12, 2021
A scene from Anne Boleyn’s Book of Hours, created circa 1500, featuring St. Anne with an open book in her hand with the Virgin Mary and Infant Christ (The British Library)
A scene from Anne Boleyn’s Book of Hours, created circa 1500, featuring St. Anne with an open book in her hand with the Virgin Mary and Infant Christ (The British Library)

Manuscript scholars have long marveled over the marginalia left in books, particularly handwritten books, and what the different layers of a text tell us about the people who made it. Look beyond the pages—to the bindings, the illustrations, the pages themselves—and a surprising material history reveals itself. Mary Wellesley, a tutor at the British Library, has written an ode to the ordinary people who wrote such manuscripts by hand, illustrated them, bound them, preserved them, and did all of the necessary labor to ensure that they survived the centuries intact, or perhaps only slightly nibbled by mice. She joins us on the podcast to talk about her new book, The Gilded Page.

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