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Cultural Values and the International Trade in Medieval European Manuscripts, c. 1900-1945

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New light shed on the international trade in medieval European manuscripts

Exploring the reasons behind the ebbs and flows of a booming trade in manuscripts in the early 20th century.

The first half of the 20th century witnessed a booming trade in medieval manuscripts. A steady supply from aristocratic libraries, where owners were struggling to maintain estates due to falling agricultural prices, was met with growing demand from newly rich industrialists, including wealthy Americans building libraries like those in Europe. “Thousands of manuscripts entered collections, where they have remained,” explains Laura Cleaver, professor of Manuscript Studies at the University of London. “Yet although fewer are now in private hands the trade has not stopped,” she notes. In the CULTIVATE MSS project, which was funded by the European Research Council, Cleaver and her team analysed the economic and cultural values assigned to these books to assess the impact of their trade on ideas surrounding European culture. Through multidisciplinary methods, the researchers explored the roles of scholars, dealers and collectors in amassing collections and how they impacted culture across the English-speaking world.

Archival record analysis

Over the course of the project, the team created over 15 000 new records in the Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts and edited over 20 000 existing records. “In particular we added a lot of data from unpublished archival sources, creating the most detailed account of the movement of manuscripts in the early 20th century to date,” adds Cleaver, CULTIVATE MSS project coordinator. Recent mass-digitisation of manuscripts helped the team to check evidence in the books and then locate them. “This was particularly helpful during the pandemic when we couldn’t access libraries,” says Cleaver.

An active role for female collectors

The team found booksellers’ archives to be particularly rich sources for the movement of manuscripts, while booksellers also played a crucial role in recommending manuscripts, facilitating purchases and sharing information. “We established that women were active at all levels of the trade, including super-rich collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner, widows and daughters who sold off family libraries, librarians and booksellers, both running businesses like Alice Millard, and working in shops,” says Cleaver. The analysis also showed that the taste of the wealthiest collectors drove up prices for certain kinds of material, notably illuminated books, limiting what was available to less wealthy individuals and institutions.

The impact of war on the manuscript trade

External events could have a huge impact on the trade. In 1914 the trade in manuscripts was booming, in part due to American demand, yet this crumbled almost entirely following the outbreak of the First World War. “It was no longer socially acceptable to be buying luxury objects,” remarks Cleaver. This reticence shifted as auctions in aid of the Red Cross reframed the purchase of expensive, non-essential items as patriotic. Hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s and the global depression of the 1930s had a major impact on the trade, while the exodus of Jewish booksellers from Germany in the 1930s helped move books and expertise to the United Kingdom and the United States. Expanding the research to early printed books In 2023, the project presented its work at a conference on Shakespeare, and the work is now forming the basis for a comparison with the trade in early printed books, from the 16th to the 20th century. “Lots of libraries and book historians have been interested in our work, and we continue to find more archival sources, so there is plenty still to do,” adds Cleaver.

Keywords

CULTIVATE MSS, manuscripts, medieval, trade, booming, war, printed books, female, collectors

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