About Manuscript Studies

The study of manuscripts provides a basic training in the most important resources for the study of classical and medieval civilisation.  London contains the largest number of medieval manuscripts in the United Kingdom and the largest concentration of palaeographers who work actively with these manuscripts.  London offers the largest number of dedicated courses on manuscripts and palaeography.

The Palaeography Room at the Senate House Library houses an outstanding and indispensable collection of books on manuscripts, manuscript facsimiles, and catalogues of manuscripts.  Jonathan Alexander, in his obituary for Julian Brown in the Proceedings of the British Academy 1989 wrote of the Palaeography Room at the Senate House Library, which has 'become a meeting place for all interested in script, illumination and the manuscript book', and he quotes Julian Brown who described it as 'an open access reference library which is perhaps the best of its kind in the world'.

The British Library also have an invaluable Manuscripts Collection which forms part of the national repository of manuscripts, private papers and archives, and contains material of outstanding research importance for all periods, countries and disciplines. The work of the DigCIM Project is undertaking to produced the first ever digitally illustrated and searchable catalogue of western illuminated medieval and renaissance manuscripts held in the British Library's collections.

The Warburg Institute occupies a unique place in European intellectual life. Its renowned Library and Photographic Collection provide the means of interdisciplinary research into the links between the thought, literature, art and institutions of post-classical Europe, and their debt to the ancient world, as well as to the influence of the Near East. They are organised according to an open-access system which is designed to bring as much and as diverse information as possible to bear on specific research topics in the humanities, focussing on but not limited to the Medieval and Early Modern periods. Substantial sections of the Library are entirely devoted to manuscripts; in the Photographic Collection, encyclopaedic and astrological manuscripts are particularly well represented.