Peter Beal is a literary scholar whose monumental work centers on the cataloging and study of English literary manuscripts. His extensive project, the Index of English Literary Manuscripts, 1450–1700, provided scholars with the first comprehensive overview of surviving materials from the period's key authors. Beal's meticulous entries detail a wide array of texts, from verse and drama to prose and correspondence, offering valuable introductory surveys of the extant materials. His research significantly enriched the study of English literature, offering an invaluable resource for understanding the period's literary legacy.
The book serves as a comprehensive glossary, defining approximately 1,500 terms related to English manuscripts. It covers a wide range of topics, including various manuscript types, physical characteristics, writing tools, surfaces, and the roles of scribes. Additionally, it addresses terminology in literature, bibliography, editing, conservation, cartography, commerce, heraldry, law, and military affairs, making it an invaluable resource for scholars and enthusiasts alike.
This latest volume in the British Library's prestigious series on the history of the manuscript in English comprises ten articles on a diverse range of texts and authors, including the "Feathery Scribe," Leicester's Commonwealth, Sir Robert Cotton, Robert Herrick, the Earl of Rochester, and John Locke, as well as two recently discovered plays--The Destruction of Hierusalem and Feniza or The Ingeniouse Mayde. The main topics under discussion are authorship, scribes, provenance, transmission, new manuscript texts, and systematic analyses. The contributors are Peter Anstey, John Burrows, Ruth Connolly, Paul Davis, Nicholas Fisher, Paul Hammond, Christopher Howe, Robert Hume, Grace Ioppolo, Hilton Kelliher, Alan Nelson, and Heather Windram.