Eric J Johnson | Ohio State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Eric J Johnson
Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, vol. 8 no. 2, 2023, p. 307-310., 2023
Thousands of manuscript fragments and intact codices reside in collections across the American Mi... more Thousands of manuscript fragments and intact codices reside in collections across the American Midwest, but most remain largely unknown to and unexplored by the scholarly community because of their perceived remoteness from more traditional centers of book collecting on the East and West Coasts. This essay introduces a special collection of ten articles highlighting various individual manuscripts and library collections in so-called fly-over states. From broken Bibles to Near Eastern masterpieces, and from small assemblies of manuscripts to large-scale digital collaborations that aim to expose the Midwest's rich manuscript resources, the topics of each article represent remarkable opportunities for scholarship, teaching, outreach, and collaboration across the manuscript studies field.
Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, vol. 8 no. 2, 2023, p. 329-351. , 2023
The breaking and dispersal of Otto Ege's manuscripts have been the subject of focused scholarly i... more The breaking and dispersal of Otto Ege's manuscripts have been the subject of focused scholarly inquiry for nearly three decades, with new discoveries and insights emerging with regularity as more scholars and collectors work to uncover previously unrecognized and unrecorded Ege manuscript fragments in an attempt to reconstruct their original codicological and historical contexts. But the historical records of Ege's biblioclasm are just as fragmentary as the manuscripts he broke, and much remains unknown about the business practices, partnerships, and processes that facilitated the distribution of his manuscripts' pages. Drawing upon a new cache of archival documentation discovered by the author, this article sheds new light on one of Ege's most important commercial partnerships, highlighting his decades-long enterprise with the Lima (OH) Public Library to market and sell fragments to their mutual financial benefit and for the first time revealing the full statistical and financial extent of the Ege-Lima partnership—and its lasting impact on the distribution of medieval manuscripts across North America (and beyond).
College & Research Libraries, 2009
Under Fire: Childhood in the Shadow of War, 2008
An overview of military propaganda produced for children between World War I and World War II, fe... more An overview of military propaganda produced for children between World War I and World War II, featuring materials produced by Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, the United States, Spain, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Published in the volume Under Fire: Childhood in the Shadow of War. Edited by Elizabeth Goodenough and Andrea Immel. Wayne State University Press, 2008: pp. 59-76 and 144-153.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 19:1 (Spring 2012): pp. 111-128, 2012
Theatre Survey, 2012
An overview of the Claude E. Anibal collection of Golden Age Spanish drama at Ohio State Universi... more An overview of the Claude E. Anibal collection of Golden Age Spanish drama at Ohio State University's Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, with an emphasis on its teaching and research utilities and a close look at a subset of contemporary annotations added to play texts by an early printer seeking to print and publish their own new/competing editions.
Fragmentology, 2021
Review of Giovanni Varelli, ed., Disiecta Membra Musicae: Studies in Musical Fragmentology (Studi... more Review of Giovanni Varelli, ed., Disiecta Membra Musicae: Studies in Musical Fragmentology (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 21), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2020, vi + 398 pp., ISBN 9781912168071 .
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 23, 2015
Tissue-thin parchment made it possible to produce the first pocket Bibles: Thousands were made in... more Tissue-thin parchment made it possible to produce the first pocket Bibles: Thousands were made in the 13th century. The source of this parchment, often called "uterine vellum," has been a long-standing controversy in codicology. Use of the Latin term abortivum in many sources has led some scholars to suggest that the skin of fetal calves or sheep was used. Others have argued that it would not be possible to sustain herds if so many pocket Bibles were produced from fetal skins, arguing instead for unexpected alternatives, such as rabbit. Here, we report a simple and objective technique using standard conservation treatments to identify the animal origin of parchment. The noninvasive method is a variant on zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) peptide mass fingerprinting but extracts protein from the parchment surface by using an electrostatic charge generated by gentle rubbing of a PVC eraser on the membrane surface. Using this method, we analyzed 72 pocket Bibles ori...
Past or Portal? Enhancing Undergraduate Learning through Special Collections and Archives, 2012
The Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies, 2014
Exhibition, The Ohio State University Libraries, 2017
Curated by Dr. Eric J. Johnson, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, The Ohio State University ... more Curated by Dr. Eric J. Johnson, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, The Ohio State University "Publish or Perish" tells the story of a religious, social, and political revolution that began 500 years ago as a traditional academic exercise but quickly accelerated into a movement that would shake Europe's very foundations. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in October 1517, he was merely doing what any other professor with a set of statements for debate might do. He drew up his points, had them printed, and posted them to inspire debate. Luther could hardly have known that by the end of the 16 th century this simple act of publication would be just the first of 4,790 separate editions of his works printed in Germany alone, with approximately 3,000 more editions that he compiled, edited, or for which he wrote prefaces.
Manuscript Studies, 2019
This article examines the now fragmented early-13th century Hornby-Cockerell Bible from a variety... more This article examines the now fragmented early-13th century Hornby-Cockerell Bible from a variety of perspectives, including an overview of its known provenance history as a complete codex between 1880 and 1981, it's subsequent breaking for profit and dispersal of its leaves around the world, and the specific-and peculiar-motivations behind the codex's destruction. The essay also includes an analysis of the manuscript within the larger context of Bible production and use in the early-13th century, including an examination of its textual content and organization, its illuminated contents, and direct evidence of medieval reader activity preserved in marginal notes, nota bene marks, and doodles. Altogether, the article explores how Scripture, as presented and expressed in this particular manuscript, has been repackaged and revalued throughout history, from its creation as a usable medieval text, to its conversion into individual, single-folio units for sale, and its gradual reaggregation and recognition as a rare and dynamic witness to the complex evolution of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Also included is an appendix recording the textual and illuminated content, current location, and individual provenance histories of the 235 (of 440) surviving leaves the author has located or traced.
Manuscript Studies, 2016
Medieval manuscripts are perishable objects. Whether they have degraded over time through constan... more Medieval manuscripts are perishable objects. Whether they have degraded over time through constant use and exposure to the elements or been deliberately cut up to be reused in other fashions or sold on the collectors' market, the fragments produced by these destructive circumstances still have much to tell modern scholars about the medieval codices of which they were once a part. Through a series of six case studies focusing on a disparate array of fragments, this essay demonstrates how scholars can use the University of Pennsylvania's Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts to help recover the hidden histories of fragmentary manuscripts.
Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, vol. 8 no. 2, 2023, p. 307-310., 2023
Thousands of manuscript fragments and intact codices reside in collections across the American Mi... more Thousands of manuscript fragments and intact codices reside in collections across the American Midwest, but most remain largely unknown to and unexplored by the scholarly community because of their perceived remoteness from more traditional centers of book collecting on the East and West Coasts. This essay introduces a special collection of ten articles highlighting various individual manuscripts and library collections in so-called fly-over states. From broken Bibles to Near Eastern masterpieces, and from small assemblies of manuscripts to large-scale digital collaborations that aim to expose the Midwest's rich manuscript resources, the topics of each article represent remarkable opportunities for scholarship, teaching, outreach, and collaboration across the manuscript studies field.
Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, vol. 8 no. 2, 2023, p. 329-351. , 2023
The breaking and dispersal of Otto Ege's manuscripts have been the subject of focused scholarly i... more The breaking and dispersal of Otto Ege's manuscripts have been the subject of focused scholarly inquiry for nearly three decades, with new discoveries and insights emerging with regularity as more scholars and collectors work to uncover previously unrecognized and unrecorded Ege manuscript fragments in an attempt to reconstruct their original codicological and historical contexts. But the historical records of Ege's biblioclasm are just as fragmentary as the manuscripts he broke, and much remains unknown about the business practices, partnerships, and processes that facilitated the distribution of his manuscripts' pages. Drawing upon a new cache of archival documentation discovered by the author, this article sheds new light on one of Ege's most important commercial partnerships, highlighting his decades-long enterprise with the Lima (OH) Public Library to market and sell fragments to their mutual financial benefit and for the first time revealing the full statistical and financial extent of the Ege-Lima partnership—and its lasting impact on the distribution of medieval manuscripts across North America (and beyond).
College & Research Libraries, 2009
Under Fire: Childhood in the Shadow of War, 2008
An overview of military propaganda produced for children between World War I and World War II, fe... more An overview of military propaganda produced for children between World War I and World War II, featuring materials produced by Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, the United States, Spain, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Published in the volume Under Fire: Childhood in the Shadow of War. Edited by Elizabeth Goodenough and Andrea Immel. Wayne State University Press, 2008: pp. 59-76 and 144-153.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 19:1 (Spring 2012): pp. 111-128, 2012
Theatre Survey, 2012
An overview of the Claude E. Anibal collection of Golden Age Spanish drama at Ohio State Universi... more An overview of the Claude E. Anibal collection of Golden Age Spanish drama at Ohio State University's Rare Books & Manuscripts Library, with an emphasis on its teaching and research utilities and a close look at a subset of contemporary annotations added to play texts by an early printer seeking to print and publish their own new/competing editions.
Fragmentology, 2021
Review of Giovanni Varelli, ed., Disiecta Membra Musicae: Studies in Musical Fragmentology (Studi... more Review of Giovanni Varelli, ed., Disiecta Membra Musicae: Studies in Musical Fragmentology (Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 21), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2020, vi + 398 pp., ISBN 9781912168071 .
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 23, 2015
Tissue-thin parchment made it possible to produce the first pocket Bibles: Thousands were made in... more Tissue-thin parchment made it possible to produce the first pocket Bibles: Thousands were made in the 13th century. The source of this parchment, often called "uterine vellum," has been a long-standing controversy in codicology. Use of the Latin term abortivum in many sources has led some scholars to suggest that the skin of fetal calves or sheep was used. Others have argued that it would not be possible to sustain herds if so many pocket Bibles were produced from fetal skins, arguing instead for unexpected alternatives, such as rabbit. Here, we report a simple and objective technique using standard conservation treatments to identify the animal origin of parchment. The noninvasive method is a variant on zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) peptide mass fingerprinting but extracts protein from the parchment surface by using an electrostatic charge generated by gentle rubbing of a PVC eraser on the membrane surface. Using this method, we analyzed 72 pocket Bibles ori...
Past or Portal? Enhancing Undergraduate Learning through Special Collections and Archives, 2012
The Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies, 2014
Exhibition, The Ohio State University Libraries, 2017
Curated by Dr. Eric J. Johnson, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, The Ohio State University ... more Curated by Dr. Eric J. Johnson, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, The Ohio State University "Publish or Perish" tells the story of a religious, social, and political revolution that began 500 years ago as a traditional academic exercise but quickly accelerated into a movement that would shake Europe's very foundations. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in October 1517, he was merely doing what any other professor with a set of statements for debate might do. He drew up his points, had them printed, and posted them to inspire debate. Luther could hardly have known that by the end of the 16 th century this simple act of publication would be just the first of 4,790 separate editions of his works printed in Germany alone, with approximately 3,000 more editions that he compiled, edited, or for which he wrote prefaces.
Manuscript Studies, 2019
This article examines the now fragmented early-13th century Hornby-Cockerell Bible from a variety... more This article examines the now fragmented early-13th century Hornby-Cockerell Bible from a variety of perspectives, including an overview of its known provenance history as a complete codex between 1880 and 1981, it's subsequent breaking for profit and dispersal of its leaves around the world, and the specific-and peculiar-motivations behind the codex's destruction. The essay also includes an analysis of the manuscript within the larger context of Bible production and use in the early-13th century, including an examination of its textual content and organization, its illuminated contents, and direct evidence of medieval reader activity preserved in marginal notes, nota bene marks, and doodles. Altogether, the article explores how Scripture, as presented and expressed in this particular manuscript, has been repackaged and revalued throughout history, from its creation as a usable medieval text, to its conversion into individual, single-folio units for sale, and its gradual reaggregation and recognition as a rare and dynamic witness to the complex evolution of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Also included is an appendix recording the textual and illuminated content, current location, and individual provenance histories of the 235 (of 440) surviving leaves the author has located or traced.
Manuscript Studies, 2016
Medieval manuscripts are perishable objects. Whether they have degraded over time through constan... more Medieval manuscripts are perishable objects. Whether they have degraded over time through constant use and exposure to the elements or been deliberately cut up to be reused in other fashions or sold on the collectors' market, the fragments produced by these destructive circumstances still have much to tell modern scholars about the medieval codices of which they were once a part. Through a series of six case studies focusing on a disparate array of fragments, this essay demonstrates how scholars can use the University of Pennsylvania's Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts to help recover the hidden histories of fragmentary manuscripts.