So a lot of my day is spent doing detective work, which I love. There's nothing that will get my mind spinning like a good mystery, and thankfully that's what makes up a large part of my cataloguing work at WBL. I had a
hard time waking up today, so I decided to reward myself with a really pretty manuscript, and one I'm planning on writing about in my dissertation! It was just as beautiful as I had hoped. A full-page illustration with lots of gold leaf as well as pretty borders, much like the image on the right.I always look at the front pages and back pages of manuscripts first, especially on the blank pages to see if owners left any inscriptions. Medieval and Early Modern owners write the funniest things in their books, but a lot of times it's much like we would write today. Sometimes it's as simple as a bookplate, but other times someone gets a little chatty and says things like "Mary is a shrew!" complete with a mean drawing (and yes, there's a manuscript in the Huntington Library in Los Angeles that has just such an inscription).
Well, today my inscription read (and please add the ye olde englisshe for yourself): "On December 4, 1532 John Smith was taken to the Tower Hill and beheaded. His loyal servant William was drawn throughout London and hanged for treason." I think my eyes almost popped out of my head! I managed to research who John Smith (whose real name is much less common) was and why Henry VIII decided to kill him as well as his poor servant. I also found another inscription by a relative written about 50 years later, so I now know the family had this book for at least a span of 50 years. Since the manuscript was written between 1425-1475 and the first writing comes from around 1532, this means the family could be the original owners, but I have no way of knowing other than to do some more research. What's more, there's a record of one of the women in the family reading another manuscript by the same author as the one on which I'm working!
Anyway, I just had to share since I'm such a happy camper!!
2 comments:
This is a fun thing to find! I always love looking at the readers' marks as well - I wrote on one at the Huntington as well where a woman wrote an entire program of marginal notations all asserting her ownership of the manuscript:
"If you say it is not DH's book then you lie!"
Love it...
Continue having fun!
I love a good mystery! This is so intriguing. I want to play too!
Mom
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