There is much to love about Kathryn James's English Paleography and Manuscript Culture, 1500–1800. Its large format, slightly bigger than 8.5 x 11 inches, enables one to read the delicate serif font with pleasure; its illustrations, totaling 312 in vivid color, offer examples from across the period and in a range of hands both professional and informal; its accessible and elegant descriptions of the practicalities of everyday writing and material culture in early modern England will educate students and remind scholars for generations to come. Also, for a work on paleography and manuscript culture to be presented as a physical item with real pages and ink—rather than as yet another website—is genuinely easy on the eyes and comforting for the soul.

James wrote this book as an introduction to the topic and survey of different hands. Aimed at students, the book has four main parts: “Writing Materials and Writers,” “Hands,” “Case Studies,” and “Exercises.” The reader learns in part one about the essential mechanics of writing during the period, such as what ingredients went into ink, what functions endpapers served, and how writing was a dedicated profession for many people. In the second part, one reads of the different letterforms, hands, and forms of abbreviation and numbers. Among the case studies we learn from a vast range of examples, including ancient writing tables, pen trials, account books, and—importantly when it comes to material culture—scrap and waste. The fourth part of the book is potentially the most practical for budding paleographers because it offers advice on how to transcribe (diplomatic, semi-diplomatic, regularized/normalized) and includes examples from the late fifteenth century to c. 1801. A full list of illustrations, glossary, selected bibliography, and index round out the volume; it is fitting that the index here is so fulsome, given the attention paid to early modern indexing practices in the example of William Camden's notebook (159–60). Across all four parts, James integrates early modern English theories and practice of writing in broader discussions of manuscript culture and print, for, as she notes, “English handwriting was shaped by printed and visual media, just as manuscript culture continued to inform the ways in which text was categorized and understood” (16). Additionally, James repeatedly—thankfully—notes that England's hands and formats were connected to those on the European mainland, with specific attention paid to Italian and French cultures and practices as they found effect in, for example, the secretary hand; indeed, “[u]ntil the middle of the seventeenth century, England imported penmanship” (16). England imported much else, too.

Unsurprisingly given the publisher, this work highlights the collections at Yale University, particularly the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, but James's book is anything but parochial. James acknowledges her debts to eminent scholars of early modern English paleography, most notably Elizabeth Leedham-Green at Cambridge and Laetitia Yeandle and Heather Wolfe at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The endnotes and bibliography demonstrate still further the point that this introduction and survey for students is built upon decades of scholarship by the best in the field irrespective of institution. Persnickety scholars looking for more depth than any introduction can offer may have wished to see detailed discussions about watermarks, letterlocking, and dating conventions (especially because too few students seem to recognize the significance and inclusive reckoning of the ancient Roman system of calends, nones, and ides). Then again, such exacting readers will know where to point students curious about such things.

English Paleography and Manuscript Culture will soon become the go-to volume for academics who teach the subject. It will be useful alongside electronic resources like the venerable course English Handwriting Online 1500–1700 (https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/) and the more recent project Early Modern Manuscripts Online (https://emmo.folger.edu). James is fully aware of (and embraces, it seems) these tools, and she notes that transcribing manuscripts while physically in the archive is, for many, a thing of the past because so many archives now permit personal digital photography. Nevertheless, she is absolutely correct that scholars “need to be able to read [them]” (219). This point is worth emphasizing despite the increasingly sophisticated technologies behind handwritten text recognition in Transkribus (https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/). Online tools and technologies can provide shortcuts, increase efficient use of time, and help scholars make connections across disparate collections, but there really is no substitute for paleographical skill. In an age of quick access to digitization of early modern books and manuscripts via (very expensive) subscription services (for those at well-heeled institutions), students still need to cut their teeth and experience the hard graft that reading early modern sources can be—even if they are in a reader's first language.

James's book will now sit on my shelf alongside a copy of that by Jean Preston and Laetitia Yeandle and binders of material from a spell at the Folger some years ago. My bookmarks in these resources are easily visible, unlike the bookmarks to the websites referenced above, buried in my computer's browser. Something tells me that I shall soon be pulling down James's volume of paper and ink for students more frequently than I shall direct them to look at their screens.