RBMS 2015 Blog

Image credit: Edward Cocker, Arts Glory or, The Pen-Man’s Treasury, London 1669; University of Pennsylvania Kislak Center for Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Special Collections.

After our previous posts looking at several workshops on the schedule for the 2015 Conference, we turn our attention in a bit more detail to the last workshop on offer: “A Very Speedy Introduction to Vernacular English Paleography,” run by independent scholar Dr. Simran Thadani.

Dr. Thadani, who goes by “Sim,” is a trained calligrapher and paleographer. She earned her BA at Wellesley College and her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, where her dissertation focused on the teaching of handwriting through print in the Renaissance.

RBMS Blog: How did you come to paleography as a subject of study and teaching?

ST: I took up calligraphy at the age of 11, but my interest in historical hands began at Rare Book School, where I took courses on letterforms and worked with the School’s fantastic collection of handwriting textbooks.

In graduate school, I studied Renaissance English literature and the history of the book, and became interested in the long intersection of manuscript and print in the 1500s and 1600s. But I quickly realized that early print was much more accessible to me than contemporary manuscript, because books had been discovered, digitized, and transcribed in large numbers, while handwritten documents were each unique, seemingly infinite in number—and all largely illegible! I wondered how to incorporate manuscripts into my work more, since they were obviously a vital part of Renaissance book culture that couldn’t be ignored by honest scholarship.

I was really fortunate to be able to enroll in one of the Mellon Summer Institutes in Vernacular Paleography, directed by Dr. Heather Wolfe, the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Curator of Manuscripts. In just 4 weeks, I had already prepared my first mini scholarly edition. It was eye-opening how easy paleography was to get a handle on, yet saddening how siloed it had become as a skill. So, with another grad student colleague, I started Penn’s Graduate Paleography Group to create community and share what we had learned.

RBMS: What can workshop participants expect to learn in their 4 hours together?  

ST: Learning paleography is like learning a language: you improve with time and practice. But fortunately, this is still English, just written differently. So, you have a head start! It does take a little getting used to at first, but in past workshops I’ve run, participants have been able to collaboratively decipher simple documents after just a couple of hours.

I’ve designed this workshop very cognizant that RBMS member-participants are likely to be working professionals looking for solid, practical points of entry into the world of the Renaissance “secretary hand,” rather than deep dives into scholarly theory or bibliographical detail. So, I’m hoping we can spend our time together looking at classic letterforms, common types of documents (letters, recipes, and wills), simple mistakes, and quick tips and tricks for transcription. And I’ll have some spare tricks up my sleeve, so happy to steer the workshop the way participants would like!

RBMS: For those not enrolled, what are some good resources to get started?

For a quick and dirty primer, I wholeheartedly recommend Cambridge University’s English Handwriting 1500-1700: An Online Course. The UK National Archives also has a great tutorial section. Finally, I’d suggest looking at some digitized handwriting manuals, so as to check out the range of secretary letterforms in use. Jehan de Beau-Chesne and Martin Billingsley are my “go-to” writing-masters for this purpose, and a simple Google Images search will bring up sample pages from their beautiful and practical textbooks, A Booke Containing Divers Sortes of Hands (1570) and The Pen’s Excellencie (1617). One is woodcut and the other is engraved, but you’ll quickly see the similarities between their alphabets and approaches. Both works are also digitized and available via the Early English Books Online database, for those who have access.

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Although this workshop is currently at capacity, do make sure you seek out colleagues and friends who were able to participate (as well as the instructor herself) and engage them in conversation! And if you’re lucky enough to participate this year, we hope you’re excited—and prepared to share what you’ll gain with the rest of us!