by The Vatican Film Library announces the recent publication of the first volume in A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library at Holkham Hall by Suzanne Reynolds. The Holkham Hall catalogue is the inaugural title in the VFL’s new series, Manuscripta Publications in Manuscript Research—a subsidiary publication of Manuscripta: A Journal for Manuscript Research, which is published for the Vatican Film Library by Brepols Publishers. This series will comprise monographs, essay collections, and catalogues pertaining to medieval and Renaissance manuscript studies.
Suzanne Reynolds
A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library at Holkham Hall. Vol. 1, Manuscripts from Italy to 1500. Pt. 1, Shelfmarks 1–399.
XXIV+389 p., 57 b/w ill. + 196 color ill., 230 x 330 mm. (2015). ISBN 978-2-503-52900-4, Hardback, 170,00 Euros. To order, contact Brepols Publishers.
The Holkham Hall catalogue is planned in four volumes. Vol. 1, pt. 2 will cover manuscripts from Italy to 1500, shelfmarks 400 and onward. Vol. 2 will cover manuscripts to 1500 from Britain and the rest of Europe outside of Italy, principally from the library of Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634). And Vol. 3 will cover all other manuscripts after 1500.
Publisher’s description: The manuscript library at Holkham Hall is among the most significant private collections in the world—yet no catalogue of its riches has ever been published. The volumes in this series will cover all the Holkham manuscripts and open up these hidden treasures to scrutiny for the first time.
This first volume in the Catalogue is devoted to the heart of the collection at Holkham Hall: manuscripts made in Italy in the Middle Ages and the age of humanism. This first part of Volume 1 covers one hundred and twenty-seven Italian manuscripts: biblical and liturgical codices (notably a lavishly illuminated Book of Hours made for Lorenzo de’ Medici), patristic texts, and the exceptional collection of Latin classical authors collected by Thomas Coke (1697–1759). New attributions to illuminators and significant discoveries in textual history and provenance will stimulate new research; every manuscript catalogued is generously illustrated, and a full bibliography and indices are also included. A substantial historical introduction, drawing on unpublished archives at Holkham, reconstructs in detail for the first time the formation and development of the Holkham manuscript library in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Suzanne Reynolds is Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts and Printed Books at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. She was Curator of Manuscripts at Holkham Hall until 2014, and Lecturer in Medieval Literature at the University of Birmingham from 1992–1998. She has published widely on glossed and illuminated manuscripts, the history of the classical tradition, and the history of collecting.
