ENGLISH HANDWRITING 1500-1700: AN ONLINE COURSE
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
BROAD HISTORICAL INTRODUCTIONS
Brown, Michelle P., The British Library Guide to Writing and Scripts: History
and Techniques (London: British Library, 1998).
Parkes, M.B., Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in
the West (Aldershot: Scolar, 1992).
Robinson, Andrew, The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs, and
Pictograms (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995).
TECHNOLOGY
Finlay, Michael, Western Writing Implements in the Age of the Quill Pen
(Carlisle: Plains, 1990).
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, 1500-1700
Lass, Roger, ed., The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume III:
1476-1776 (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1999): see esp. Vivian Salmon, 'Orthography and
Punctuation'.
Salmon, Vivian, 'The Spelling and Punctuation of Shakespeare's Time', in Stanley
Wells and Gary Taylor, eds, William Shakespeare: The Complete Works.
Original Spelling Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
The Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
[articles on the history of each letter of the alphabet as the start of that letter's
entry: see especially e, i, j, u, v, y]
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE MANUSCRIPTS: REFERENCE AND SCHOLARSHIP
Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol.1: 1450-1625, compiled by Peter
Beal, 2 vols (London: Mansel, 1980).
Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol.2: 1625-1700, compiled by Peter
Beal, 2 vols (London: Mansel, 1987-1993).
English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, edited by Peter Beal and Jeremy
Griffiths, Vol. 1- (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988-).
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE MANUSCRIPT CULTURE
Beal, Peter, In Praise of Scribes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
Hobbs, Mary, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts
(Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1992).
Love, Harold, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993).
Marotti, Arthur F., Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1995).
Woudhuysen, H.R., Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 15581640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). [esp. Part I, 'The Circulation of
Manuscripts, 1558-1640']
EARLIER ENGLISH SCRIPTS
Parkes, M.B., English Cursive Book Hands 1250-1500 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1969).
Wright, Cyril Ernest, English Vernacular Hands from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth
Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE SCRIPTS
Greg, W.W., English Literary Autographs, 1550-1650; part I, dramatists; part II,
poets; supplement, scholars and archaeologists (Oxford, 1925-1932).
Petti, Anthony G., English Literary Hands from Chaucer to Dryden (London: E.
Arnold, 1977).
Dawson, Giles E. and Laetitia Kennedy-Skipton [Yeandle], Elizabethan
Handwriting 1500-1650: A Guide to the Reading of Documents and Manuscripts
(London, Faber, 1968).
Preston, Jean F. and Laetitia Yeandle, English Handwriting, 1400-1650: An
Introductory Manual (Binghamton, N.Y: Medieval & Renaissance Texts &
Studies, 1992). [available in a paperback reprint from Pegasus Press]
Croft, P.J., Autograph Poetry in the English Language: Facsimiles of Original
Manuscripts from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century, 2 vols (London:
Cassell, 1973).
Tannenbaum, Samuel A., The Handwriting of the Renaissance: Being the
Development and Characteristics of the Script of Shakspere's Time (London:
George Routledge & Sons, 1931). [an early work in the history of the study of
English Renaissance palaeography and to be approached with caution]
'A Note on Elizabethan Handwriting' in An Introduction to Bibliography, by
Ronald B. McKerrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927); reprinted in Gaskell's A
New Introduction to Bibliography and including good specimen alphabets.
Hector, L. C., The Handwriting of English Documents (Dorking: Kohler and
Coombes, 1988).
Johnson, Charles and Hilary Jenkinson, English court hand, A. D. 1066 to 1500,
illustrated chiefly from the public records (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915). On
court hands, see also Hilary Jenkinson, Palaeography and the practical study of
court hand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915); and The Later court
hands in England from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1927).
Grieve, Hilda E. P. , Some examples of English handwriting from Essex official,
ecclesiastical, estate and family archives of the 12th to the 17th century, with
transcripts and translations (Chelmsford: Essex County Council, 1949). [see also
later reprints]
EARLY MODERN HANDWRITING MANUALS edited or in facsimile
A newe booke of copies, 1574: a facsimile of a unique Elizabethan writing book
in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, ed. Berthold Wolpe (London, 1962).
Ugo da Carpi, Thesauro de Scrittori, ed. Esther Potter (London: Nattali &
Maurice, 1968).
The First Writing Book: An English Translation and Facsimile of Arrighi's
Operina, the first manual of the Chancery Hand, ed. John Howard Benson
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955).
Three Classics of Italian Calligraphy: an Unabridged Reissue of the Writing
Books of Arrighi, Tagliente, and Palatino, intro. by Oscar Ogg (New York:
Dover Publications, 1953).
A. S. Osley, ed., Scribes and Sources: Handbook of the chancery hand in the
sixteenth century (London: Faber, 1980). [includes selections from a range of
Continental and English writing-masters]
