The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club

Apr 2, 2025 6:27 PM

Author:Christopher de Hamel

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. But 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 were participants in 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 which 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.

Reviews

Reading the Posthumous Papers is like taking a walk in excellent company ... an exceptional book, and itself an object worth cherishing.

—— Daniel Brooks , Sunday Telegraph

This book can be enjoyed on so many levels. The illustrations are exquisite and the writing ... is intelligent, illuminating, voluptuous and mischievous. The members of the club are brought to life with sensitivity; we can't help but find their nerdiness endearing. ... The most delightful feature of this book is, however, the author. I've never encountered one so willing to bare his soul, without ever explicitly setting out to do so. He throws open the doors to his world, exposing its beguiling nature. Sit at my table, he says, feast on what I adore. "The Club is still open for membership . . . All applicants are warmly admitted."'

—— Gerard DeGroot , The Times

In this stunningly beautiful book, Christopher de Hamel constructs an imaginary club of people who adore mediaeval manuscripts; bibliophiles whose obsession he shares. The 12 delightfully eccentric members span eight centuries - de Hamel imagines meeting them, sharing precious discoveries, trading gossip. The illustrations emit a light of their own, but what shines even brighter is the author's boyish enthusiasm for his subject.

—— Times Books of the Year

a beautifully produced and magnificently surprising journey through the history of how and why people have wanted to collect manuscripts. An impossibly recondite subject, you might think; but it turns out to have a lot to do with all sorts of things about how we make sense of our histories and cultures - and it introduces us to a gallery of unforgettable characters.

—— Rowan Williams , New Statesman Books of the Year

Christopher de Hamel ... has the rare capacity to turn a scholarly specialism into a humane and humorous adventure. ... De Hamel retains an almost lyrical sense of wonder as he unclasps each groaning tome, opens its parched pages and lightly steps into the alternative world painted by its illuminators. ... he speaks of "meeting a beautiful manuscript" rather than reading it and his own book makes you feel you've spent time - a very long but absorbing time - in his convivial company.

—— Peter Conrad , Guardian

Christopher de Hamel's great gift is to tell life stories without taking anything away from the manuscripts, which remain the star of the show. Thanks to the beautiful illustrations in this wonderful book, we can see for ourselves how spellbinding an encounter with them must have been. Five years ago de Hamel entranced the world with his Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts. This time the meetings are with remarkable manuscript owners, and the result is equally precious

—— Kathryn Hughes , Sunday Times

gloriously engaging and readable ... De Hamel wears his erudition lightly, and the reader is taken deeply into the worlds of individuals who lived across almost a thousand years of history

—— Richard Ovenden , Financial Times

The story of the people who created, saved and collected Europe's most sumptuous manuscripts, it's beautifully illustrated, a rich feast of scarlet and gold.

—— Dominic Sandbrook , Sunday Times Books of the Year

an eccentric but charming and instructive book which is oddly difficult to put down

—— Jonathan Sumption , Spectator

This beautifully produced gazetteer invites us to look inside our extraordinary wealth of parish churches and see afresh the impressive, the touching, the beautiful and the downright sinister in their monuments, from the fourteenth-century obsession with mortality and the cadaver or the flourishes of baroque new men to the vainglorious fanfares or sentimental doggerel of the nineteenth century. Knights lying with their faithful dogs or wives, busts coolly neoclassical or lavishly periwigged are all accommodated in miniature showhouses in the architectural style of their period. A happy bedfellow for Nicholas Pevsner

—— Matthew Rice

An enthralling testament to our ceaseless human striving for eternity

—— Editor's Choice , Bookseller

Antiquarian CB Newham's book might seem more melancholy than merry. But it is a life-affirming survey of Britons through the ages

—— House and Garden

An impressively researched account, bringing to life the fears and preoccupations of obscure and humble people, and setting them in the context of their time and place.

—— Richard Francis , The Spectator

Powerfully evocative, a grimly compelling morality tale with more than one unexpected twist ... an outstanding achievement, haunting, revelatory and superbly written - a strong contender for the best history book of 2021.

—— Andrew Lynch , Irish Independent

A pulsating history of sorcery and superstition ... an academic feat but reads like a Stephen King thriller - and it's just right for our conspiracy-laden times.

—— Robert Epstein , The i

A riveting micro-history, brilliantly set within the broader social and cultural history of witchcraft. Drawing on previously neglected source material, this book is elegantly written and full of intelligent analysis.

—— Wolfson History Prize 2022

If the Stuarts are having their time in the sun at last, then Leanda de Lisle is one of the reasons they are. Masterful and pleasurable about a transformative century and a neglected, underestimated woman's role in it -- what more can one want from history?

—— SARAH FRASER, author of The Prince Who Would Be King: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart

A fascinating book about a fascinating woman -- Henrietta Maria's story deserves to be better known, and this book brings her completely alive

—— FRANCES QUINN, author of The Smallest Man

Henietta Maria's perspective allows this book to become something much more than mere analysis of politics and war. De Lisle understands that history is a story of people; she possesses a visceral understanding of the emotions that swirled inside Henrietta Maria

—— The Times, *Book of the Week*

[A] thrilling story... a revisionist life of one of the most compelling and controversial women in British history... a book, like a life, should be measured against its own mission. And in this - to tell the story of Henrietta Maria's extraordinary life from her own perspective - Leanda de Lisle triumphs where her subject could not

—— The Critic

Lucid, entertaining and combative revisionist biography

—— Paul Lay, author of Providence Lost

A triumph of a book which will revise opinion of this 'reviled' queen

—— Annie Whitehead, author of Women in Power

Thanks to Leanda de Lisle's new biography, Henrietta Maria can finally answer the charges laid against her. In debunking and deconstructing these myths de Lisle gives an account of the politics of the time

—— Times Literary Supplement

The much-maligned Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, is thrillingly reassessed in de Lisle’s lyrical biography

—— Daily Telegraph

Harrowing but excruciatingly funny

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

[A] blazing debut... Electric from page one

—— Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*

Scabrously funny... Were his account a novel, you might accuse it of being too far-fetched

—— Guardian, *Books of the Year*

His remarkable, funny, arrestingly well-written memoir brings to mind Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels, but is also entirely, exhilaratingly its own thing

—— The Times

Original Sins is a memoir that reads like a novel; a brilliant one. Matt Rowland Hill's struggle to overcome the perfect storm of his upbringing and addiction makes for a great story, but it's the blend of artistry, wit and skilfully timed stabs of brutality that make it such a vivid and thrilling experience. It's not that I didn't want to put the book down, more that it wouldn't release me from its grip

—— Chris Power

Brilliant... lively, engaging and extremely well written - scrupulously, painfully honest... sharply funny

—— Pandora Sykes, Substack

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