Harold Whetstone Johnston

How fast you can read may well determine how well you like this book. That, plus maybe how old you are.

The study of paleography and textual criticism is vast, and applies to every language which has a written tradition predating the invention of printing. Confining the subject to early Latin manuscripts helps somewhat -- but not much. You still have to understand all the aspects of ancient copying (preparing parchment or papyrus, pens and ink, scriptoria, lighting). You still have to learn the various problems scribes had (from homoeoteleuton to dittography to the need for a corrector). You still have to learn that the shape of the alphabet, and the conventions of spelling, change over time. You have to know about palimpsests, and pseudonymous authors. As I said, the subject is vast.

This book isn't big enough to cover it all. No book ever published has been. But if you want a quick view, this covers most of it. The chapter names are indicative: "The Making of Manuscripts," "The Publication and Distribution of Books," "The Transmission of the Books," "The Keeping of the Manuscripts," "Styles of Writing," "The Errors of the Scribes," "Methods and Terminology of Criticism," "Textual Criticism," "Individual Criticism." All of these sections are too short. But at least they're all there. Plus there are many fine facsimilies of important Latin manuscripts.

Of course, the book is more than a century old. The field has advanced greatly -- to mention just two obvious improvements, we now have computer collations, plus infrared and ultraviolet photography to allow us to read previously-unreadable manuscripts. None of this is covered, and they have changed the field. So this shouldn't be the last book you read. But there are worse choices for a first book. And the subject can be genuinely fascinating.… (meer)