The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. But we generally think much less about the countless men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe their existence.

This entrancing book describes some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years. A monk in Normandy, a prince of France, a Florentine bookseller, an English antiquary, a rabbi from central Europe, a French priest, a Keeper at the British Museum, a Greek forger, a German polymath, a British connoisseur and the woman who created the most spectacular library in America - all of them were participants in what Christopher de Hamel calls the Manuscripts Club.

This exhilarating fraternity, and the fellow enthusiasts who come with it, throw new light on how manuscripts have survived and been used by very different kinds of people in many different circumstances. Christopher de Hamel's unexpected connections and discoveries reveal a passion which crosses the boundaries of time. We understand the manuscripts themselves better by knowing who their keepers and companions have been.

In 1850 (or thereabouts) John Ruskin bought his first manuscript 'at a bookseller's in a back alley'. This was his reaction: 'The new worlds which every leaf of this book opened to me, and the joy I had in counting their letters and unravelling their arabesques as if they had all been of beaten gold - as many of them were - cannot be told.' The members of de Hamel's club share many such wonders, which he brings to us with scholarship, style, and a lifetime's experience.

Christopher de Hamel

The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club tells of twelve men and women, from the eleventh century to the twentieth, all deeply immersed in the world of illuminated manuscripts. The saint, the patron, the bookseller, the artist, the antiquary, the collector, the rabbi, the savant, the librarian, the editor, the forger and the curator had very different reasons for their passion, but manuscripts animated the lives of them all and unite them in fellowship across time.

Christopher de Hamel takes us into in their homes and workplaces, from the monasteries and synagogues of Normandy and Moravia to the universities of Germany and the museums of America. In the pages of his book, remarkable manuscripts tumble through the centuries, connecting the shared enthusiasm of a French prince and a Greek peasant and an African-American curator. This is a story of greed, discovery and disaster -- and of unquenchable joy in the greatest and most treasured books ever made.