The Manuscripts Club

The people who made, saved and sometimes destroyed medieval manuscripts, over a thousand years of history, from the acclaimed author of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts


The Manuscripts Club tells of twelve men and women, from the eleventh century to the twentieth, who all share an overwhelming obsession with illuminated manuscripts. The saint, the patron, the bookseller, the artist, the antiquary, the collector, the rabbi, the savant, the librarian, the editor, the forger and the curator had very different reasons for their passion, but manuscripts animated the lives of them all.

Christopher de Hamel takes us into in their homes and workplaces, from the monasteries and synagogues of Normandy and Moravia to the universities of Germany and the museums of America, to chart a kinship of minds and to peer into these extraordinary lives among manuscripts. In the pages of his book, remarkable manuscripts tumble through the centuries, connecting a French prince and a Greek peasant and a Black curator. This is a story about society and manuscripts, what manuscripts do for people, and why they mattered and still matter to us. He demonstrates the enduring hold on our imaginations that these works carry, and the transcendent human connection that they represent. It is also a story of greed, discovery and disaster and of the unquenchable joy in the greatest and most treasured books ever made.