With an insistent emphasis on the early role of women as authors and artists and illustrated with over fifty colour plates, Hidden Hands is an important contribution to our understanding of literature and history. There are countless images of bathing women in the book because. From the Cuthbert Bible, to works including those by the Beowulf poet, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Sir Thomas Malory, Chaucer, the Paston Letters and Shakespeare, Mary Wellesley describes the production and preservation of these priceless objects. The mysterious medieval Voynich Manuscript is probably a womens health manual, according to history researcher Nicholas Gibbs. Without manuscripts, she shows, many historical figures would be lost to us, as well as those of lower social status, women and people of colour, their stories erased, and the remnants of their labours destroyed. Hidden Hands tells the stories of the artisans, artists, scribes and readers, patrons and collectors who made and kept the beautiful, fragile objects that have survived the ravages of fire, water and deliberate destruction to form a picture of both English culture and the wider European culture of which it is part. They are not only the stuff of history and literature, but they offer some of the only tangible evidence we have of entire lives, long receded. The range is remarkable.Manuscripts teem with life. Few people have described the experience so eloquently. It is located in southern Tibet, was constructed in the 13th CE, and is considered to be one of the largest collections of Tibetan and Indic manuscripts in block printed books, containing the history of humanity. Manuscripts establish a personal bond across the centuries between her and the men and women who made them. The Library of Sakya Monastery was discovered in southern Tibet, hidden in a nearly 60-meter-long and 10-meter-high wall. Wellesley writes about creators, authors, scribes and parchment makers. Sublimely conceived and beautifully written."- Gerard DeGroot, The Times (UK), "Fascinating information. Her taste is not for 'the sanitised, ordered blandness of the modern edited text.'"- Daily Telegraph, "This book is an expression of love. Manuscripts: Herculaneum Papyri Codex Sinaiticus Madrid Codex Dead Sea Scrolls Dunhuang Cave documents Novgorod Birch. According to Jewish law, no writings containing the name. This is a sensational debut by a wonderfully gifted historian."- Dan Jones, bestselling author of The Plantagenets and The Templars, "To Wellesley, books are objects, tangible things, a million miles away from Kindles, which are inert. Hidden in a wall of the Ben Ezra synagogue were almost 280,000 Jewish manuscript fragments: what has come to be called the Cairo Genizah. It is one of the texts addressed by Irenaeus in his Against Heresies, placing its composition before 180 CE. Wellesley draws on her deep scholarly knowledge of medieval manuscripts to weave a captivating tale, told through generations of 'tremulous hands' and forgotten artistic geniuses, whose works inform so much of what we know today about the Middle Ages. The Apocryphon of John, also called the Secret Book of John or the Secret Revelation of John, is a 2nd-century Sethian Gnostic Christian pseudographical text attributed to John the Apostle. "Mary Wellesley is a born storyteller and The Gilded Page is as good as historical writing gets. This is a sensational debut by a wonderfully gifted historian." -Dan Jones, bestselling author of The Plantagenets and The Templars A Facebook post claims that secret manuscripts uncovered in a Tibetan monastery detail more than 10,000 years of human history. Rich and surprising, it shows how the most exquisite objects ever made by human hands came from unexpected places. The Gilded Page is the story of the written word in the manuscript age. Scholar Mary Wellesley recounts the amazing origins of these remarkable manuscripts, surfacing the important roles played by women and ordinary people-the grinders, binders, and scribes-in their creation and survival. Other works by the less influential have narrowly avoided ruin, like the book of illiterate Margery Kempe, found in a country house closet, the cover nibbled on by mice. Many have survived because of an author's status-part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer's writing, for example, is because he was a London-based government official first and a poet second. A breathtaking journey into the hidden history of medieval manuscripts, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the ornate Psalter of Henry VIII "A delight-immersive, conversational, and intensely visual, full of gorgeous illustrations and shimmering description." -Helen Castor, author of She-Wolves Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty.
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