Okay. Ready? Uh welcome to the newest installment
of digital edition digital discussions. Sorry. And there's
a sign up sheet for the digital humanities list,
serve if you are already on it or even if you are,
they won't duplicate you. Pass that around. You
can sign up if you wanna get emails about things
. Mm. Uh Mike Kuczynski is associate chair and
associate professor and chair of the department of english at
Tulane University. He has published widely on middle english
religious tax on the liquefied movement Since completing his graduate
work at U.N.C. Aside from
a two year stint at N. C. State
, his tenure at Tulane has only been interrupted by
the force of nature named Katrina and numerous research trips
to far flung archives. His output includes 1919 95
books, prophetic song, the psalms as moral discourse
in late medieval England with pen. He is currently
completed. In addition entitled A Glossed Mothered Salter bothering
library Oxford manuscript bodily 554 for the early english text
society And just re editing the final volume in the
series. Emmanuel of Writings in Middle English, 1015
1500 on religious and secular lyrics. I may have
this last bit wrong, but my memory is that
once upon a time this room used to has the
folio editions fully open volumes, oversized volumes that in
many cases will affect similes. They're now back on
the fifth floor where they were when I first came
here. Uh this library tends to move things Around
every 25 years or so, they end up back
where they started. Uh, so the fact that
this was effect similarly housing place uh write some happiness
I think for Professor Kaczynski's topic and title effect.
Similares tail being a perambulations through the early history of
manuscript. Surrogates by way of the career of thomas
Wilson, Schoolmaster of Leeds, who died in 1760
with some implications for current digital technologies and he gets
the award for longest title in the series, Please
, Johnny welcome for Michal Kosinski. Yeah. Mhm
. Okay. I begin with a place the picturesque
ruins of a Benedictine Abbey and Whitby, north Yorkshire
along a stormy english coast. Some of you may
know the site already as the inspiration for Bram stoker's
novel dracula, in which a ship carrying the economist
vampire's coffin crashes against some jagged rocks nearby, this
Gothic skeleton. Now that I've gotten you into a
properly eerie mood and will return to Whitby later in
my talk, let me transport you to an equally
melancholy and alluring locale where a few years ago I
first encountered the ghost of thomas Wilson of leads the
facsimile list of my title and this place is the
Harvard Online library cataloguing system, acronym Hollis. Ever
since this initial encounter with Wilson, I've been obsessed
during my spare time. My primary research field as
dan just told You, is medieval literature with chasing
down the elusive thomas Wilson and his widely dispersed and
fascinating antiquarian productions. I have two stories to tell
today then, which are interrelated. One is an
account of Thomas Wilson's biography. He was born circa
1700 and died either in 1760 or 61 and his
career as an antiquarian fact, civilised insofar as these
can be reconstructed from very fragmentary evidence, references to
him by other usually more prominent figures. The handful
of surviving letters he exchanged with some of these persons
and most important, the textual ephemera marginal annotations,
transcripts and facsimile copies that Wilson left in the libraries
and particular books he visited. The most important finding
I've made in pursuing Wilson is that for him in
his circle, old books and the transcripts and facsimiles
made from them were not merely textual objects, but
sites or places for textual networking. This fact,
I think brings Wilson's meticulously hand drawn versions of medieval
and early modern documents, sometimes in roman or italic
letter forms, and at other times in a faux
gothic hand into immediate association with the digitally produced an
internet circulated photographic surrogates that have revolutionized lately. Our
study of old books and book history. My other
story line, therefore concerns the means whereby I have
been variously frustrated and successful in tracking down the elusive
Wilson by way of his few but significant textual remains
. Many of these after his father's death. Were
given by Wilson's son, joseph to the leads public
library which you see here where they are today.
And also by way of what I will call Wilson's
textual aura. The emanation of his influence across cyberspace
, available to the widest possible network of modern anti
queries such as myself, in the form of electronic
finding aids, emails, websites, and high resolution
pixelated images of Wilson's literary works. Global electronic searches
have both advanced and impeded my pursuit of Wilson.
My first engagement with him when he was virtually invisible
was a result of internet serendipity. One evening searching
the Harvard online catalogue under the subject headings Salter and
middle english religious lyrics, the kinds of texts I
normally study. I became intrigued by a description of
Houghton Library M. S. Lat 394 A 13th
century salter connected with Whitby Abbey. That on its
back pages and these are not conjoined with the rest
of the book, and hence not true fly leaves
, has medieval english poetry written according to the Hollis
entry in an RK iZING Gothic script And signed by
one Tw. The Harvard catalogers, blinded possibly by
the light of celebrity identified tw tentatively as thomas Warton
England's first authentic literary critic, author of a narrative
history of english poetry into volumes and ultimately poet laureate
, not being able to fly off to boston on
the instant to consult the manuscript, I did the
next best modern thing. I texted an old friend
at the Houghton Library and two days later had digital
images of tw s handiwork, such as this one
taken on my friend's smartphone. In my email ready
for analysis, it turns out that tw provided more
information about himself by way of his facsimiles than the
Harvard catalogers had noticed. Wilson copied the texts of
three Middle English poems into Lat 394. The first
two are derived from a long hagiographic work by the
15th century english monastic poet john litigate entitled The Life
of Our Lady. A discussion of the origins of
the feast of candle nous, the feast of the
purification of Mary, which is celebrated on February two
. That's on the left here and lid Gates commendation
to his master, the poet Geoffrey chaucer, which
you see on the right. The third work he
copied did the slide, just didn't is an anonymous
litany to the Virgin and several categories of old testament
, patriarchs and martyrs. At the end of the
two litigate selections, in the form of a learned
footnote, tw explains that he copied these passages from
a manuscript quote, curiously written upon vellum, painted
and gilt, that is on parchment, illuminated and
decorated with gold leaf in his own possession, latin
paint ace, which he gave to Richard Rawlinson,
L. L. D. F. R.
S and F. S. A. In the
year 17 50. Wilson also speculates about the date
of this particular copy of lid Gates poem, Getting
that almost a century too early. His exemplar was
copied circa 1500, not 1400, and he wrote
something else beneath the sanitation. To that he or
another user of the manuscript so completely obliterated by overwriting
as to render unrecoverable. Likewise, at the end
of the anonymous middle english litany T. W.
notes that it has taken quote from a manuscript about
300 years old that is mid 15th century in the
hands of Mr Richard Hey of Leads merchant 17 39
. Like tw s footnote to his lid Gate facsimiles
. This one is full of interest, just the
kind of thing that nowadays propels and enterprising. Enter
query scholar such as myself, immediately to google.
Electronic searching began at this point, however, to
complicate, rather than to clarify my efforts at identifying
tw as I wildly searched for. Tw lid gate
, litany Rawlinson and Hey! In various combinations,
the celebrity Warton faded gradually into the background, only
to be replaced by a mob of thomas Wilson's.
All of whom seem to have some kind of Yorkshire
connection and some measure of interest in antiquarian is um
thomas Wilson, bishop of Soder and the isle of
man, for instance, who had a few friends
in common with the man I later identified as thomas
Wilson, schoolmaster of leads, thomas Wilson teetotaler and
evangelical author of a very popular book, Distilled spiritus
liquors, the bane of the nation being some considerations
humbly offered to the legislature. I read this book
. It's not recommended or another medievalist named thomas Wilson
, who edited William hones. The ornaments of church
is considered an important early treatise on the Gothic revival
and who came to be credited erroneously with that books
authorship and thomas Wilson intimate of the famous Yorkshire anti
query ralph thursby, who figures more prominently in my
paper shortly husband of the eldest sister of thor's B's
wife, whose father, yet another antiquarian named thomas
Wilson of Yorkshire traveled in the same circles as our
facsimile list and to whom thursby refers throughout his copious
diaries, frequently affectionately and distractingly if you're obsessed with
identifying the correct thomas Wilson of leads as Uncle Wilson
. Electronic aids to research can be a great boon
to antiquarian scholars. The quick access the internet gives
to a wide range of online library catalogs and finding
aids, and that easy digital photography provides to textual
objects that only a few years ago one would have
had to submit grant proposals and take long journeys in
order to inspect and study as students of the digital
humanities are aware. Recent technological innovations have sped up
immensely. The tedious process of archival excavation, The
digging, sifting, sorting, and copying to which
men like Wilson in Dusty 18th century libraries devoted many
of their waking hours. There are also, however
, some disadvantages I've found in searching for Wilson to
electronic antiquarian is um Just as Bill Gates's Utopian fantasy
of business at the speed of thought, the title
of his popular 1999 book brought us arguably by means
of algorithmic trading to the brink of international economic collapse
. Scholarship at the speed of thought, as I
found during my initial pursuit of thomas, Wilson can
be risky business as well. My conflation of information
gathered from google and google books about multiple thomas Wilson's
on more than one occasion had me bewildered, convinced
that the facts similar. So I was tracking with
some kind of dabble gang er or shapeshifter or at
the very least, a spirit capable of bi or
tri location. Electronic searches for all of their usefulness
, flatten out the individual and relational value of historical
facts. And I would include here manuscript images,
reducing discrete instances of textual and visual phenomena to an
inundated, homogeneous wave of information. They can circumvent
and even disable the way you can disable pop ups
on your computer. The interruptive, interpretative and die
aggressive processes of evaluation that were inevitably applied to physical
texts and pictures as they were before the internet.
More slowly and discreetly discovered lest you dismissed me as
a Luddite. Let me add that my researches into
thomas, Wilson, the fact symbolist might never have
begun or continued had it not been for electronic finding
aids and digital photography? This having been said,
the contrast between the nature and pace of Wilson's own
antiquarian investigations and the nature and pace of my archival
investigations of Wilson is noteworthy. The casual use of
digital surrogates can also lead as I found in tracking
Wilson. two wasted speculation about cameras. For instance
, in one of the smartphone photos of Lat 394
on the left provided by my friend, I spotted
in the gutter of two manuscript leaves a doodle,
a distinctive grotesque face that I thought might help me
to locate the Kodak's from which T. W.
Whoever he was harvested the blank parchment for his facsimiles
. It came as a surprise then, once I
purchased higher quality flatbed digital scans of lat 394 from
Houghton photographic department. And you can view the entire
manuscript now online at their website that what I was
convinced was a face, in fact, was cursive
script for scanning purposes. The manuscript leaf shown here
has been held flat by what Peter staehli Brass describes
in a recent article as prosthetic fingers, plastic or
metal clips and photographed in a more uniform light than
my friend with a smartphone had available. Months later
, when I had the opportunity to handle let 394
myself, I made another particular discovery. The red
ink around that script is sealing wax and the script
apparently an adhesive offset of a paper surface from a
letter or some other document that at one time became
stuck to Wilson's parchment sheet. I'm unlikely ever to
locate that letter or document, and even if I
do what it would tell me about Wilson's facsimile making
would probably be trivial. My example, however,
points up how digital surrogates, no matter how detailed
ought to be regarded by scholars as provisional adjuncts to
not definitive substitutes for their originals. Better digital images
can resolve problems of interpretation caused by less accurate ones
without access to the thing itself, however, which
is now sometimes hindered or blocked entirely by libraries that
are producing comprehensive digital archives of their collections. One
scholarly conclusions about books are bound to become more precarious
thomas. Wilson's handcrafted facsimiles. Perhaps we should call
them artisanal like handmade cheeses have, of course,
their own inherent limitations. Wilson was making them presumably
for the same reason libraries scan manuscripts to broaden access
, whereas digital scans, however, can hope in
the vast majority of their details to duplicate their originals
. The same is not true of handmade facsimiles which
are more accurately described as evocative of their exemplars,
thomas. Wilson copied manuscripts at a time when the
medieval revival was just getting underway. When black letter
, the heavy quasi liturgical typeface of caxton and wink
and award, was all the rage among bibliophiles.
The same impulse that gave rise in the 18th century
to Horace Walpole, Gothic Villa, Strawberry Hill inspired
Wilson's passion for calligraphy, and his elaborate transcripts of
middle english poetry at the same time, while proto
romantic emotions played a role in Wilson's facsimile, making
its foundations were essentially rational. Like the best digital
photographs and scans. Wilson's facsimiles are empirical designed to
be viewed and assessed if at all possible, in
light of their originals. Hence the information he provides
in his footnotes about his exemplars, their owners and
dates of ownership Between the archaic gotha sized pages at
the back of let 394 and high resolution electronic scans
. There are differences of degree of resemblance to their
exemplars, but similarities of purpose. Why, however
, did Wilson right His facsimiles in a faux medieval
hand, and at the back of the 13th century
salter. Some answers to these questions are suggested,
I think, by the broad outlines of his biography
. Wilson was for most of his career as an
antiquarian Master of the Charity School in leeds. This
was a concern established like similar schools in other 18th
century cities to teach impoverished Children reading, writing,
and the elements of religion and morals. We don't
know what kind of schoolmaster thomas Wilson was. He
tells us in one letter that his work days were
10 hours long, leaving him only 3-4 hours in
the evening for antiquarian study. We do know,
however, that as schoolmaster, he was personally responsible
for instruction in penmanship, A good engrossing hand being
regarded as a sign of virtuous character in the 18th
century. The Christian Schoolmaster, a handbook published in
1707, remarks that, quote, the master must
take care to teach his pupils a fair legible hand
practiced by regular transcription from the bible. These copies
than to be checked carefully by students against their originals
. Such exercises are not of course the same as
facsimile making, but they indicate how Wilson's digital muscle
memory as it were, might have functioned when he
sat down himself late at night to write out his
own meticulous and artful transcripts from ancient documents. There's
the charity school in leeds. It's now It's been
rebuilt um in the 19th century. So that's not
the original uh school building and it's recently been converted
into a very nice bistro. Are no longer any
schoolchildren there, writing in the margins of a book
which I located in the Bay Nikki Library at Yale
, concerning the famous Oxford antiquarian thomas Hearn, one
of his Biglia graphic heroes, Wilson, observes that
he quote, had a fine ink hand at his
pen and carefully transcribed very neatly all the books he
published quite over on loose papers from the original manuscripts
, which originals. He carefully kept very clean and
return them to the owners and libraries they belong to
this praise of Herne is also a suma of Wilson's
own antiquarian method. His emphasis on the clarity of
writing, necessary and transcriptions of historical documents for wider
circulation among a network of acquaintances and the need on
the part of the true anti query to respect that
network by returning documents to their owners in a timely
fashion. An observation that is slightly ironic, given
that Wilson himself was once accused perhaps unjustly of absconding
with another person's facsimile transcript of part of doomsday book
. The mammoth 11th century manuscript census of England Wilson
made his transcripts and facsimile is at a time when
many owners of old books, whether institutional or private
thought of them as both personal and public property to
be circulated rather than squirreled away. Medieval and early
modern books in Wilson's Antiquarian network, not as extensive
as the internet, but just as electric were valued
as sources of inspiration as well as information models for
the writings of others. And right Wilson did.
He took as his master, ralph thursby, the
prominent Yorkshire anti query I mentioned earlier, who had
a private museum packed with hundreds of medieval manuscripts,
many of them to this day on traced thursby died
intestate without a will and his collection was dispersed after
his death, as well as other curiosities as thursby
called them, such as roman, funerary urns,
ancient coins. And here I'm quoting from thursby Zone
catalog stones taken from the stomachs of animals and even
quote, the arm of the marquis of Montrose unquote
. Don't ask about that, You have to google
it. Uh huh. Wilson probably did not know
thursby himself, but was friendly with his eldest son
, who passed on to T. W. Several
of his father's manuscripts, which Wilson in turn gave
to the famous english clergyman and anti query Richard Rawlinson
, whom I've already mentioned in 17 50 or thereabouts
five years before Robinson's death. Among these items you
will remember from Wilson's footnote was the exemplar Of two
of his transcripts inlet 394. A copy of lid
Gates, Life of Our Lady on the right there
, That is now M. S. Rawlinson poet
, 140 in the body and library. Oxford.
Indeed, most of his manuscripts, along with other
classical and medieval items from his collection, Rawlinson donated
too badly. Dr Rawlinson, Wilson writes in a
letter I discovered from 17 53 to another manuscripts.
Networker Dr Richard Richardson, a botanist, quote,
is buried alive in the Bodleian library in placing his
marbles and 40 presses. Bookcases of manuscripts. The
last letter I had from him was about five weeks
ago just setting out for Oxford, from which he
promised to send me a long letter, but I
hear nothing yet. Rawlinson. In fact, as
I just very recently discovered, Presided over the Council
of the Society of Anti Queries in 1751, when
thomas Wilson of leeds was proposed for an elected fellow
of that organization. S A perhaps since the date
falls the year after, he gave all of these
manuscripts to Rawlinson as a result of his ingratiating gifts
to the chair. Some men are social climbers,
some men and women, thomas. Wilson of leads
, however, was an archival aspirant, urgent to
associate with those above him in social station who owned
or could otherwise provide access to prestigious libraries and whose
introductions. Wilson and his letters is an inveterate name
. Dropper might advance his stature in the community of
those devoted to the legacy of England's material culture.
The visual features of Wilson's facsimiles indicate an almost obsessive
compulsive concern with this legacy. Following thursby, Wilson
espoused an early interest in monastic charters and aristocratic pedigrees
, collecting and copying these into large folios in what
one contemporary describes as an almost typographic hand. Here
is the title page to Wilson's catalog of coats of
arms and pedigrees from the West Riding in Yorkshire,
indicating that its contents derived from manuscripts owned by john
Hopkinson, yet another prominent Yorkshire antiquarians. Yeah,
Wilson also inscribes his title page, as was his
custom, with his latin motto, nullah Dhs saina
lina, no day without a line. An injunction
he found in renaissance emblem books, where it is
applied to the arts of drawing and engraving, not
penmanship, possibly to wilson's mind. The adage underscores
the extraordinary pictorial appeal of his calligraphy As his copious
, handwritten account of the finely would plot a northern
anti royalist conspiracy of 1663 makes plain Wilson can move
fluently between the ornate stylistic registers of roman, italic
and Gothic scripts. This is a digital scam from
microfilm of the original, which is now in the
british library in London. Wilson's translation of certain Gothic
or humanist originals into printed roman letter forms should not
be seen as a denigration of the medieval and early
modern past, but rather as a visual effort to
assert its authority while absorbing that passed into a vibrant
antiquarian present to draw a parallel john yuri, an
antiquarian based at Christchurch Oxford, produced at the start
of Wilson's century, the very first edition of chaucer
in roman typeface. The book was actually completed and
published posthumously, four years after Yuri's death, by
timothy and William thomas. Yuri's text chaucer scholars agree
, is a critical mess, but the visual impact
of his large folio, which has absolutely no black
Gothic letters on the title page. Unlike many 18th
century books that contain ancient materials, a search chaucer's
status as a medieval genius, while at the same
time insisting on his modernity, one of the otter
medieval manuscripts that came into Wilson's hands, not by
way of ralph thursby, but from an even more
famous 18th century owner. The actor David Garrick,
is this Wickliffe I'd Salter, that has been fully
digitized and made publicly available on the website of the
john Ryland Library in Manchester, As a tribute to
Wickliffe. A fellow Yorkshireman, Wilson Mimics Roman typeface
by fashioning a formal title page for Ryland Singlish,
MS 88. In effect publishing the Wickliffe I translation
of psalms as a legitimate book on the long dead
heretics behalf. Wilson's cala graphic labors were motivated by
a combination of antiquarian devotion and insanity. Uh huh
. I have to be blunt about this matter what
thomas. Frog Nall Dibdin himself a book invalid diagnosed
in the early 19th century as bib leo mania or
book madness In 1740. When Wilson is just finishing
the finely would transcriptions, which he saw a picture
of. Up here, he writes to another aristocratic
collector whose library he wishes to tour, that he
quote written almost day and night, at my spare
hours, and so over fatigued myself, which brought
on a slow fever that I have some months passed
, almost despaired of another site of your library.
But I'm now pretty well recovered enough, so that
he will soon walk several miles as he relates.
In a subsequent letter to inspect his Friends collection.
The few letters of Wilson's that I've been able to
locate describe a parra pathetic life on foot rather than
in carriage, as our facsimil ist trudges from library
to library, copying and copying and copying until he's
sick with it. But in his delirium desires more
Wilson, I ought to say, was indulged,
but not generally admired among the more serious anti queries
of his own network and the networks of the following
19th century. As Clerk of Saint john's Parish Church
in leeds where he kept and annotated the baptismal register
registries and where he is now buried, Wilson accumulated
lots of detailed knowledge of leeds, family history,
even those who relied on it for their own scholarship
. However, such as dr thomas, Whitaker,
clergyman, aunt inquiry, and early student of pierce
Plamen, felt free to deride tw once he was
gone As dull, sullen, disappointed and envious,
adding the backhanded compliment that Wilson was indefatigably and usefully
laborious, albeit albeit in a narrow and bookish manner
. His surviving annotations, transcripts and facsimiles make clear
, however, that thomas Wilson was able to participate
empathetically in medieval and early modern manuscript culture. This
empathy is a strong feature of his facsimile making that
simply cannot be duplicated by a digital camera or flatbed
scanner, no matter how passionate the eye or hand
that directs the mechanism. The standard method for producing
facsimiles of medieval manuscripts in the 16th through early 18th
centuries was typographic not manual. When, for example
, the son of the famous 17th century Norfolk anti
Query, Sir Henry Spellman sought to expand access to
an important latin psalter with anglo Saxon glosses that his
father owned now sto manuscript to in the british library
shown here on the left. He had the text
set up in type a printer's device and formal statement
of the title of the book replaces his father's ornate
personal inscription and a wood block initial be with some
perfunctory Vinet patterns, substitutes for the manuscripts, elaborate
, elaborately decorated. Betas, capital, moreover,
Spellman juniors. Typographic facsimile of his father's manuscript is
not just an image of the original. It is
a critical edition of its content, with variant readings
indicated alongside the main text and at the beginning of
the volume and apparatus that describes the manuscript symbols used
in these notes, as well as the innovative typographic
alphabet that mimics the insular script of the anglo Saxon
gloss. The typographic facsimile is more unlike its manuscript
original. Then, like it, Wilson's handmade facsimiles
are both purer and more sophisticated than Spellman's typographic one
, They are in a minor tradition of hand drawn
facsimiles from the 18th century that seek to represent the
spirit behind the words of their originals, as well
as mimicking their script. Most of the practitioners of
this kind of facsimile making, we're not professionals whose
knowledge of what the exemplars and question actually said might
distract the facsimile list from how the exemplars should appear
in copy ralph thursby mentions in his diary, for
instance, which describes him as frequently consulting old parchments
, the work of a 10 year old prodigy,
James smith who was able to imitate without effort and
to a wonder in thor's bees phrase, The insular
hand of the famous 12th century Texas. Our offense
is a book of laws connected with the diocese of
Rochester. When we look at smith's facsimile next to
its original, we are likely to be preoccupied with
the differences between exemplar and copy. Rather than appreciating
their similarities. Our taste has been spoiled by years
of access to microfilm and now much more sophisticated digital
photographs from medieval manuscripts, technologies beyond the wildest imaginings
of course, of men such as thursby, students
of Bail Wolf may know of the famous Thorkelson facsimiles
of the unique manuscript of that poem prepared by an
employee of the british museum. James Matthews in 17
87. At the behest of the Icelandic danish scholar
, grim or johnson thor Colin Because of serious deterioration
of the margins of the Bay Wolf manuscript during the
19th and 20th centuries, which had already been damaged
by fire. The facsimiles which, like James smith's
work on the texas, re fences mimic the handwriting
of their original. Our our only source for particular
readings of words and lines in the poem that otherwise
would be lost altogether to literary history. Unlike James
smith in James Matthews Wilson surrounds his hand drawn facsimiles
with all kinds of information, the footnotes I've already
shown you and in the case of his lid gate
extracts, explanatory head notes that amplify manuscript rubrics.
Wilson introduces his candle nous extract at length explaining how
it was quote copied from a curious manuscript entitled a
book compiled by john litigate monk of Barry at the
excitation and stirring command and inducement of our worshipful Prince
King Henry V five in the worship honor and glory
of the birth of the most glorious made wife and
mother of our Lord Jesus. Christ Wilson takes care
to distinguish graphically between the middle english rubric itself,
which he takes from his exemplar and his editorial intrusion
on it copied from a curious manuscript entitled, by
writing the ladder in smaller roman rather than large Gothic
handwriting. Moreover, in writing the Gothic script of
the rubric, he follows the spelling of his original
note, the use of the graph thorn and the
elaborate treatment of initial capitals. In his exemplar drawing
those letters in bright red rather than brown ink,
a simpler way of conveying a distinction made more elegantly
by way of gold leaf. In his exemplar,
Wilson acquired what is now Rawlinson poet 140 from Joseph
Briggs, a Yorkshire Clergymen who had himself acquired it
from Thursby before giving the book in turn to Richard
Rawlinson, he wrote on its front fly leaves,
information concerning its provenance and an extensive biography of lid
gate, including his epitaph and a catalogue of the
poets, major and minor works. Wilson did not
create his lid Gate facsimiles to stand independent of their
exemplar, but in a kind of dialogue with it
. His scholarly networking involved not simply associating himself with
a number of prominent anti queries, many of whom
knew each other, but also of linking books with
other books, his own handwritten productions with medieval manuscript
originals, and with volumes of social and cultural history
from and in which he recorded observations related to his
library adventures. When he wrote in praise of thomas
Hearns clear antiquarian hand. He expected others to follow
his lead in seeking out his heroes transcripts. When
he designed a faux typographic title page for a copy
of The Wickliffe I'd psalter, he wrote as well
on the front fly leaves that follow it, a
biography of the reformer, which ends with some up
to date bibliography. And we can check those references
and find them to be accurate. When he rode
out in his RK iZING Gothic script, an anonymous
middle english litany to the Saints. In M.
S. Lat 394 he echoed in his own letter
forms the duties or direction of strokes in the hand
of his original. Now in ST mary's parish library
in steeple, Ashton, Wiltshire, I've never been
to see this manuscript. I also got these photographs
um by way of somebody's smartphone. I found the
website for the parish church and wrote to the church
warden and um and ask him if he wouldn't mind
taking a couple of photographs from this manuscript for me
and he photographed the entire manuscript over a weekend and
sent me all of these, all of these smartphone
photos. And uh to my inbox, when Wilson
copied out extracts from this manuscript he preserved in his
facsimile, most of the errors and abbreviation marks in
his exemplar in order to render as accurately as possible
. Not only the sensibility, but also the sense
however faulty of his scrabble predecessor. As I draw
this perambulations to a close, let me address.
Finally, the second question I posed earlier Concerning Wilson's
Lat 394 facsimiles. Why did he copy them in
this book in particular, A fragmentary 13th century salter
connected with Whitby. First several of the psalms in
the book are connected with a medieval devotion known as
The Hours of the Virgin Mary, Who is the
subject of the two major texts, Wilson copies at
the back of the manuscript lid, Gates stands on
candle nous, and the first part of the anonymous
middle english litany of the Saints. The facsimile leaves
of Lat 394, As I've already told, you
, are not conjoined with the 13th century salter that
forms the bulk of this manuscript book. But we
can hypothesize that Wilson himself brought these items together,
since he writes down the margin of this first recto
of the psalter in his distinctive autograph hand, a
learned comment on the antiquity of the gold leaf used
for the large psalm initials, citing an italian book
on medals that he probably found in Ralph Hornsby's library
For Wilson, the 13th century salter and the exemplars
, from which he copied his facsimiles had a kind
of corporate identity as latin and vernacular books of religious
poetry that take up among their themes praise of God
and his saints and veneration of the virgin mary.
Wilson's facsimiles are like his annotation concerning the books,
gold leaf responses to the Salters pages, aesthetic and
scholarly records of their writers, engagement with the physical
matter of medieval piety Justice. Wilson wrote annotated lee
on the first recto of Houghton, M. S
. Lat 394 He wrote annotated Lee at the very
bottom of its final 13th century Verso just before his
middle english transcripts or facsimiles begin this time in latin
, and in a hand similar to the Gothic one
, in which he copies out his facsimiles, Abati
a Day, Whitby in community, a boring census
from the Abbey of Whitby in the general region of
york thomas Wilson of leads. That is is our
only authority for the attribution of Latte 394 to Whitby
Wilson. So far as I have been able to
discover, had no empirical reason for connecting this psalm
book with Whitby. None that is besides his affection
for the place shared by many of his Yorkshire contemporaries
as a quintessentially romantic ruin. In writing out this
manuscript description, which passed incidentally without query through to
modern auction catalogues, and right into Harvard's online description
of this manuscript where it remains today. Wilson was
making an inference about this book, unwarranted by any
bibliographies, in fact, but provoked by his fierce
english regionalism and the fervent devotion of an antiquarian acolyte
. His brief lapse into romantic medievalism. Perhaps can
be excused if we reflect that our own faith in
and fervor regarding the value of digital science to archival
study exhibits its own kind of romantic wonder. This
faith and fervor are more congruent than we may like
to admit with thomas. Wilson's antiquarian delight in old
books and a melancholy medieval ruin, which to quote
from the novel with which I began this paper stands
out against the red sky, every stone of its
broken battlements articulated against the light of the setting sun
. Thank you. Mhm. Okay, I'm sure
Michael entertaining question. Absolutely. As you can see
, I'm insane about this guy. A book invalid
. Mhm. Yeah. Oh, thanks. The
people who are committing forgery. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. That's um that's actually something dan and I
have have talked about um you know I think about
john Harris who was the famous caxton uh forger who
actually um I mean got into business hand drawing pages
that were lacking from copies of books like paxton's you
know first edition of the Canterbury Tales because collectors at
the time there was this kind of collusion between collectors
and forgers I guess I would say forgers in quotation
marks because these people were being hired um to to
provide um absent leaves in order to make a you
know a book in somebody's library seem complete. Um
You know had they not provided those leaves? You
know collectors were notorious for harvesting those lost leaves from
other copies. They um you know they came upon
thereby creating of course other other imperfect copies. And
you know Harris Harris left a very detailed summary of
his methods and In producing these. You know,
I had I had several more slides in here,
but I wanted to, you know, stay to
about 45 minutes. Um you know his his methods
for producing forged printed 15th century pages involved, not
just tracing originals and then thinking in those tracings,
but then using dies, you know, typefaces to
tap in the indentations that you would expect to find
in the page if something was, you know,
printed on a on a on a printing press.
So um you know, I've never had the sense
with Wilson stuff that he's trying to pass off.
I mean, nobody could be, well, you
know, obviously all the extraneous matter in these facsimiles
indicates he's not trying to pass off what what he's
written as an authentically medieval document, although he does
harvest parchment to To write these on in order to
make them more authentic as facsimiles. And I've been
trying to run that. The parchment is very poor
quality. It's not the quality of the 13th century
uh Salter's um, parchment. And I think what
what he did was to strip off rappers of um
, of old manuscripts, sometimes soft bound and in
parchment and use that. But there was this guy
, um, he was actually prosecuted, don't know
if you've ever heard of him? Antique smith.
All right, john Harris was the caxton forger antique
now that that's his uh known digger as it were
. Um antique smith was a guy, I think
he uh in the early 19th century who would go
to um book markets and he would um, he
would purchase just old books so that he could harvest
the blank fly leaves and you have this old laid
paper on hand so that when he made his forgeries
, you know, they were more difficult to,
to detect. So there was certainly foragers active all
through this time. But um, you know,
Wilson is somebody he thought of himself as being in
the company of thomas Hearn, you know, and
ralph thursby and Richard Rawlinson, you know, he
wanted to, yeah, you know, he wanted
to be in that number, you know, and
um, so I've not, I've not really come
on, you know, anything of his that that
I would call an effort at a at a forgery
, but no, that's a that's a very interesting
, you know, convergence of um activities during this
period that, you know, that's relevant to fascinating
, weird suck. Yeah, well, these guys
, you know, they really, you know,
and you know, my motif and the talk not
just because it's Halloween time, you know, of
him as a ghost, you know, as somebody
who, I mean he really is a ghostly figure
. I've not been able to find a single,
you know everybody had their portrait done at this time
. I mean you know portraits of all sorts of
you know uh major and minor figures have not been
able to find any any kind of portrait of thomas
Wilson. Yeah it looks like there is some variation
. Go back to. Mhm. The two.
Yeah that that's the that's the Harvard um uh website
where you can see the whole thing um Right here
. Yeah. Yeah. Place yes. Yeah.
Yeah. He wasn't going for it. Well absolutely
and that's that's an excellent point. You can see
you know he tries to duplicate like that capital T
. You see the capital T. There. You
know he's trying to duplicate the shape of that.
You know but he doesn't treat all of his letter
forms in that way. You know who use he'll
use this single compartment a you know at times when
there or you know that A. And angels there
the double compartment a you know in his subtitle here
it's a single compartment. A. Also I think
you know he was ignorant about certain things concerning medieval
manuscripts. So here Blessed Lord mary you can see
there dots under the word Lord. You know that's
that's a mark of cancellation in a medieval manuscript by
sub pointing you know so the scribe instead of scraping
out the word would put dots underneath the word to
indicate if any further copy is made simply you know
eliminate this word and the copying. So it's a
cancellation by sub pointing. Well he just copies that
word out. Blessed Lord mary Virgin. You know
he doesn't understand that. You know that was supposed
to uh nor does he duplicate the sub pointing,
You see, he doesn't understand what the sub pointing
means, so he's not um you know, and
then you know this to the proposition which is inserted
with a caret and the manuscript. You know,
he just inserts that, you know, he doesn't
represented as a super linear correction with a with a
carrot. So you're right, you're absolutely right.
He's not, you know, he's not um making
a kind of xerox, he's not doing, you
know what Harris was doing and forging, you know
, caxton. Um But I also think, and
I've been trying to find, I've only found one
other example of a document he wrote um which is
exclusively Gothic in its handwriting. That title page for
the finally would plot, you know, where he
goes from roman to italic to Gothic and then back
to roman and italic. Again, you know,
that's a sort of mixed um bag. But in
the leads public library and the librarian, they're actually
wrote a little blog entry on Wilson. I hadn't
thought anybody else was even interested in him. And
I saw this blog entry on him. And in
that entry, the librarian points out that Wilson tried
to produce a facsimile copy info medieval hand of the
Yorkshire section of Doomsday book, but he really could
not get his his head or his hand or his
head and his hand around how to duplicate this script
. Um so so that particular um example of his
gotta sizing handwriting, which I don't, alas,
have a photo of to show to you um you
know, indicates his kind of working through how to
do this. And what I suspect is that this
is another stage, you know, in his learning
how to do this kind of thing. So there
might be other, you know, the thing about
this project is that his stuff is dispersed all over
the place. You know, it's at the Beinecke
library at yell, it's in the british library.
Uh, you know, and you know, these
letters that I find, you know, they're I
mean they're all over the place. So, you
know, sort of like his master thursby, you
know, after his death, all of his stuff
, you know, that that was not given directly
to the leads public library by his son. You
know, it just went all over the place,
you know, interesting is not critically know, Lord
mary think right, yeah, he's not yeah,
that's not his interest, you know, but this
is, you know, this is this is close
enough right? Without, I mean, it clearly
looks different from this, but it's close enough to
this to be, you know what I would describe
as a fact, similar effort, an effort to
, you know, I mean, the term facsimile
means to make something like something else, you know
, to two, you know, to write something
out which perhaps before it got bound into this book
with the psalter, he handed around to people as
an example of these two interesting instances of middle english
poetry concerned with the virgin mary. You know,
the poem about Charles, er the commendation to Charles
. I mean, this was the age when as
a result of people like thomas, wardens efforts,
chaucer. And then even more minor figures like lid
Gate were coming into their own as writers. So
that's another dimension of Wilson's interest in in mimicking their
work. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you could
talk a little bit more about the risky business.
Yeah. Um at one point you talk, you
said that digital surrogates should be viewed as adjuncts,
not replacements for your channels. And I think the
realities of contemporary scholarship is that they are becoming replacements
for harder for us to justify the library. Well
, yes, yeah, just pull it up on
the screen. Well, absolutely. Example of something
that was actually, yeah, you would never find
out through. Right? So what does this portend
for the future? Training new scholars? Your field
? Are we going to get to the point where
nobody gets to put their hands on the original?
Well, it is happening and we were talking about
this um then, and I earlier, just to
give you a kind of analogous example When when I
was a graduate student in England for the first time
, this was in the mid-1980s, I was writing
a book review of a collection of essays on a
very important manuscript of Middle English religious poetry and prose
called the vernon manuscript. And I mean, this
is absolutely unique manuscript. It has a sister um
called the Simian manuscript in the british library and in
in London. But the vernon manuscript is unique.
It's a very valuable book, it's very large,
it's as big as a suitcase and about five times
as heavy as a suitcase. So, I was
a graduate student at that time and I'm writing this
book review. So, I, you know,
I called the manuscript up and they said, well
you'll have to carry it for yourself. Um we
have this special book stand, but you know,
that was fine. So I used the manuscript.
Well, um you know, several years later,
a photo facsimile of the vernon manuscript was produced,
and I was publishing something that dealt with the vernon
manuscript and some texts in, and I was back
in in England at the bodily and Library. And
by that point, I not only had a PhD
, but I had several publications under my belt.
So I had a certain amount of street cred,
you know, um and I called up the vernon
manuscript and was told, I couldn't look at it
, and you sign a ledger when you look at
it, they have this formal ledger that you signed
, so that, you know, like a date
book. So they know who checked it out.
I mean, nobody could ever steal it. It's
just that massive and heavy, but they refused to
let me look at it. And I spoke with
the librarian. Um and I said, you know
, this is ridiculous. When I was a graduate
student over here doing my dissertation, you let me
look at this, this manuscript and, you know
, I'm now, you know, a PhD with
publications and, you know, I'm doing serious work
on this manuscript. I've had all this training and
you won't let me see it. And the librarian
said, well, the fact similar has been published
in the meanwhile. And I said, you know
, you know, as well as I do that
, that's, you know, one of the stupidest
reasons for denying me access to this. I don't
think I used that word, This is a person
I didn't get along with very well, but that's
that's a kind of analogue to what's happening now with
um digital access. You know, the more collections
are um comprehensively digitally scanned, the more restricted access
to them is getting. And, um, you
know, on the one hand, you want to
you want to preserve these books. On the other
hand, medieval manuscripts as anyone who's ever worked on
them. Those are, in many respects more durable
than modern books in terms of the handling and use
of them. Um, We have this project going
at Tulane right now, which I headed up a
few years ago in connection with bibliography and methods,
something called a documentary Literary Studies certificate. Um you
know, in the bibliography seminar, the students get
all excited about, you know, working in archives
handling things. So we have this kind of follow
up independent study structure where we place them as interns
in archives and they help the catalogue stuff and work
with it. And then they do a portfolio which
is often digital and form like a power point or
something to do a presentation like this. And and
I mean they're really, you know, there they're
turned on by this idea of physical access to the
past and that's going out. I mean that's that's
being gradually eliminated. And I was telling a student
just the other day and I was on the internet
and I just Googling ralph thursby, you know,
this is the kind of thing that happens to you
when you get into this kind of stuff and you
have a computer In front of you. And I
noticed a bookseller in London was um was selling a
little um a little thing um you know, a
kind of letter of recommendation that Ralph Thursby had signed
for£50 and I mean I don't I don't usually
buy rare books that don't have a whole lot of
money, but I thought it would be nice,
you know, since I've been doing this work to
buy it. Um and then I realized in looking
at it that it wasn't ralph thursby because there's a
date on, it wasn't ralph Frisbees um signature,
but his sons, you know the guy who was
the intermediary for Wilson. So I really have to
buy this now as I got out my credit card
and bought it and I was showing it to a
student and the student was like, and I mean
it's just a, you know, I mean it
cost me 90 bucks, but you know, it's
that idea of being in touch, you know,
I mean literally in touch, you know, with
with the um with the distant past that that,
you know, students get really excited about. We're
also working on something that we call archive app right
now at the Tulane Library and it's a, it's
a smartphone app, so that because we're going,
we're beginning a project called archives and outreach, where
we're going to try to train local high school teachers
and working in the archives. And these are not
by by any means just medieval and early modern and
18th century stuff we have on our campus, the
Anise Todd collection, which is one of the largest
collections of, you know, information, documentary information
connected with african african american history, the Harlem renaissance
. We have, you know, county Cullins um
correspondence. You know, some of Langston uses correspondence
. You know, we have students um you know
, doing digital editing of these texts. So archive
app is an effort to um get inner city high
school kids interested in the Tulane Archives. So you
would load it on your phone and say bring up
a sheet of medieval music. You know, we
have a lot of these, you know, just
pages of medieval music. Um and then you would
, you know, bring up a menu, you
know, see this transcribed and tap on that and
then you see the latin written out. Um see
this translated, tap on that. Uh listen to
this song. We have an early music group in
New Orleans. It's quite well known music at a
camera there, recording all of these for us.
And then the last thing is, you know,
set up an appointment to see this. You know
, said you go to the rare books room and
you know, as a high school kid and go
in there under supervision and work with this, you
know, document from the 14th century. And um
and you know, a lot of this was inspired
by a talk that I heard, I always forget
the guy's name, Michael, I can't remember his
last name. He's the former librarian at Eton College
in London. And he said he was, you
know, I mean that's a very Tony place that
he was sitting in the library one day, surrounded
by all these old books. And he said,
he suddenly realized he was giving this talk at the
Newberry Library in Chicago. That's where I met him
, Michael MEREDITH. And he said, he suddenly
realized that unless somebody introduced this material physically to young
people, that at some point that was going to
be it, you know, I mean, uh
, you know, there wouldn't be anybody coming to
look at it and it would be more or less
useless. So he started a kind of rare books
boot camp for inner city London kids. And it's
been a huge success, you know, at Eton
College Library in in London, you know, and
we're in Eden and and I think this is really
, you know, technology is great. And I've
been, you know, I mean, I wrote
to this guy, you know through the parish website
and he took these photos for me and you know
, had I been writing this stuff 20 years ago
, I wouldn't have gotten, you know, halfway
down the road that I've gotten down, you know
, much more expeditiously, you know, by contacting
, you know, Dennis Martin at the Houghton or
you know, the church warden at ST mary's and
steeple Ashton. But what I always tell my students
while I, you know, tell them stories like
that is that, you know, when you use
technology, you also have to be aware of it
um of its um difficulties, you know, and
and some of those are our disabling rather than enabling
to scholarship at a student, just the teaching of
course last semester in middle english mystics. So I
assigned one student that I have them all doing little
research things on the web and I said, you
know, find some medieval and renaissance paintings of jesus
in the house of Martha and mary. Um because
this was the story that was used to distinguish between
the contemplative life and the active life in the middle
ages. Mary sits at christ's feet, Martha waits
on him and Martha complains. And you know,
Jesus says, Martha, you're Martha, you're busy
about many things, mary is concerned with the one
thing that's most important. So the student came back
and she said, well, Professor Kaczynski, I
did these surgeries combining all the terms and whatnot.
And you know, I got some of these pictures
, you know, from the renaissance of Martha and
mary. But I kept turning up these, these
pictures of another Martha. She showed me Martha Stewart
, our modern version of the biblical Martha. And
I said to the student, well, she's been
busy about many things, too, but most of
them were high handed rather than high minded. I
think we've got over Michael's talking. Oh, yeah
, thanks so much for coming. And uh, 1042 01:09:09.569 --> A:middle L:90% yeah.