Letters of Humfrey Wanley

Download or read book Letters of Humfrey Wanley written by Humphrey Wanley and published by Oxford : Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of 243 letters, only a handful of which have previously appeared in print, illustrates the full range of Humfrey Wanley's interests as Anglo-Saxonist, palaeographer, and the greatest librarian of his age. Covering the years from his arrival in Oxford in 1694 to his death in 1726, they show the genesis and growth of Wanley's great Catalogus, his comprehensive account of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts published in 1705. They also chart his formulation of palaeography as a discipline for English scholarship from an immense range of ancient materials, and illustrate the skill and energy with which Wanley, as library-keeper to Robert Harley, built up the Harleian collection (subsequently one of the foundation collections of the British Museum).