Making the Medieval English Manuscript (original) (raw)

Abstract

Toshiyuki Takamiya, Professor Emeritus of English literature at Keio University in Tokyo and renowned book collector, began his love for western European medieval manuscripts during a visit to the Yushodo Bookshop in Tokyo in 1970. He was captivated by the physical qualities of western books and remembers admiring their heavy leather bindings, which were wholly unlike the lighter materials and delicate stitching used for Japanese books and scrolls. From the outset, Professor Takamiya possessed a talent for spotting remarkable manuscripts decades before the market did. He collected Middle English manuscripts when they were still abundant and undervalued. His collecting was always guided by his scholarly insights into the English and Latin textual tradition. A less academic collector might have been satisfied with one copy of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ; the Takamiya Collection has four, each with unique and important textual and codicological features. More remarkable still are the collection’s three copies of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, each an important witness to the text. The Beinecke Library’s acquisition of the Takamiya Collection is a significant milestone in the study of the medieval English book. This is the largest, most comprehensive, and finest collection of medieval English manuscripts assembled in modern times.

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