The Manuscripts Club

The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts

By: Christopher de Hamel

Narrated by: John Lee, Christopher de Hamel

* A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice *

The acclaimed author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts introduces us to the extraordinary keepers and companions of medieval manuscripts over a thousand years of history

The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. However, we generally think much less about the countless men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe their existence.

This entrancing book describes some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years: a monk in Normandy, a prince of France, a Florentine bookseller, an English antiquary, a rabbi from central Europe, a French priest, a Keeper at the British Museum, a Greek forger, a German polymath, a British connoisseur and the woman who created the most spectacular library in America—all of them members of what Christopher de Hamel calls the Manuscripts Club.

This exhilarating fraternity, and the fellow enthusiasts who come with it, throw new light on how manuscripts have survived and been used by very different kinds of people in many different circumstances. Christopher de Hamel’s unexpected connections and discoveries reveal a passion that crosses the boundaries of time. We understand the manuscripts themselves better by knowing who their keepers and companions have been.

In 1850 (or thereabouts) John Ruskin bought his first manuscript “at a bookseller’s in a back alley.” This was his reaction: “The new worlds which every leaf of this book opened to me, and the joy I had in counting their letters and unravelling their arabesques as if they had all been of beaten gold—as many of them were—cannot be told.” The members of de Hamel’s club share many such wonders, which he brings to us with scholarship, style and a lifetime’s experience.

©2022 Christopher de Hamel (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Exceptional in expertise, graceful in style and illustrated as vividly as its subject, this book is a masterpiece.”—Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal

“Crack the spine of any volume by de Hamel and you will step into a world of bookish wonderment. One of the most eminent living scholars and catalogers of medieval European manuscripts, de Hamel is also their greatest champion, having devoted his career to revealing their treasures and mysteries . . . makers and collectors and preservers, the people who have been responsible for helping to perpetuate one of the great cultural legacies of the pre-modern world . . . de Hamel sets aside his posture of well-earned expertise to gaze with the reader in ingenuous wonder at the work arrayed before him . . . an invitation all but the most churlish readers will gratefully accept.”—Bruce Holsinger, New York Times Book Review

“A love story. [De Hamel’s] interest is with community: with the passion for art, for learning, for nerdy minutiae, for history still living and breathing on the page, that brings manuscript lovers together. If you can imagine shedding tears because a manuscript is so exquisite, then this is a book about your people.”—Elyse Graham, Public Books

Wish de Hamel had narrated it all

Another wonderful book by de Hamel, best listened to and thumbed through simultaneously. But I miss the warmth and charm of his voice as soon as the introduction ended. (He also voices the epilogue.) The narrator was professional enough but sounded snobbish and clipped every phrase in a way strange to my ear. Your mileage may vary and I hope it does!

Manuscripts Through the Centuries

The author did an admirable job of subject that might have been excruciatingly dry. I didn’t know beforehand, if I would enjoy an excursion through each of the major manuscripts he spoke of. It is an amazing world. Not for general consumption of everyone, however.