PETER BEAL, A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1450 to 2000.

Abstract

‘YOU may want to look up it in Beal’ my palaeography instructor used to say. For more than a quarter of a century scholars have associated Peter Beal’s name with the Index of English Literary Manuscripts (vol. I came out in 1980 and vol. II in 1987–93). Given that A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1450 to 2000 will certainly find room on library shelves throughout the world, there is every probability that many scholars will now have to start referring to ‘Beal’s Dictionary’ as well as to ‘Beal’s Index’. However, even if it integrates the OED in various places (see e.g. ‘bezant’, ‘scripophily’, and ‘trefoil’), Beal’s is not merely a ‘dictionary’. It is, rather, a vade mecum of the stamp of John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors, including many discursive entries, which sometimes take the form of short but very informative essays (see e.g. ‘Letters Patent’, perhaps the best concise survey of the topic available to date). While admitting, in the admirably frank introductory note, to a ‘special interest’ in the English Renaissance (pp. viii–ix) the book will not disappoint neither those in need of guidance on other periods (and, at least in part, on other areas of Europe) nor those who need assistance when wrestling with the complex vocabulary of, say, heraldic, ecclesiastical, military, and maritime documents, or those in need of understanding the often murky jargon of bibliography and textual studies. No two individuals will agree on what a dictionary, companion, or reference book should include or leave out: Peter Beal’s expertise and vast knowledge provide a most useful selection of terms which covers not only almost every aspect of codicology and palaeography (understandably, scripts receive here only brief descriptions) but also related matters such as manuscript containers, seals (again, including seal containers, cf. ‘skippet’), writing surfaces (see e.g. the interesting distinction between ‘writing box’ and ‘writing slope’), and miscellaneous terms related to a wide array of subjects from academic records to accountancy, from ‘old-style’ dates to Public Records and State Papers. In addition to this, one also finds data on several inventions, from passports to carte-de-visite, from postage stamps and postcards to typewriters and carbon copies.