Manuscript Studies

Manuscript texts – those written or copied by hand – provide important evidence for language variation and change, literacy, and textual production in the past. Where holograph texts survive, we can infer details of an author’s idiolect and authorship practices. Copied texts, on the other hand, can provide abundant evidence of their transmission history and the methods and behaviours of the scribes who copied them. As well as telling us about the literacy skills and training of the writers who produced them, manuscripts also contain signs of use, for example, corrections and glosses, which reveal how later readers received the text. In addition to reflecting language variation and change, this valuable evidence can show us how readers interpreted and evaluated manuscripts and their contents.