The advent of printing in England in the mid-fifteenth century has often obscured the continued proliferation of handwritten documents of all kinds, a situation not helped by the fact that many works on English manuscripts end with the introduction of the moveable type. Peter Beal's new Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology attempts to redress the balance by focusing on the period from 1450, and his terminus of 2000 is a salutatory reminder that, even in the digital age, manuscript sources remain important.

The Dictionary is, however, more than just a guide to manuscripts and their production in the era of print, for Beal includes a wide array of objects, activities, and people related to handwritten sources, from inkhorn to inspeximus and scrivener to stenography. Indeed the author goes so far as to include a number of terms relating to “writing technologies and technologies in the pre-electronic era” (ix), including ballpoint pen and typewriter. The inclusion of some legal, military, and nautical terminology is another bold move and provides a useful introduction to often unfamiliar terms. Although the title states that it is a volume concerned with English manuscript terminology, Beal also includes terms that have a much wider application, and indeed many of them are as valuable for material written in Washington, DC, as in Washington, County Durham.

Peter Beal is senior research fellow at the University of London and previously spent a quarter of a century as manuscript expert at Sotheby’s, London. He uses this considerable experience to good effect both in writing the entries (although his interest in the early modern period is clear) and in providing a wealth of examples to clarify certain points. This is particularly useful in explaining how and why something apparently trivial can be of crucial importance, such as the wormholes which provide evidence for validating the Vinland map (441–42). The choice of illustrations is also generally good and clearly benefited from Beal's experience.

The stated aim of this volume is provide a guide to manuscripts and related subjects for a wide audience, and Beal is clear from the outset that this will necessitate only brief discussions of some subjects, the omission of others, and a certain degree of subjectivity. While this is only to be expected from such an ambitious project, it does on occasion lead to a rather unbalanced feel to the Dictionary. The entry for the complex pecia system is, for example, only slightly longer than that for gallows letter.

The author's background is also clear in a number of entries relating to highly specialized topics or ones where the definition is a matter of debate. Examples of this are the entries for parchment and vellum; although Beal does note that the two words are often used interchangeably, he follows the common practice of “bibliographers and bookdealers” (283) rather than of manuscript scholars in his definition. This is perhaps not surprising from someone who worked for Sotheby's for many years, but is still rather disappointing for a scholar of Beal's repute. The entry for illumination is also one with which many manuscript scholars and art historians may take issue.

As is almost inevitable in book of this scope, the Dictionary contains a small number of errors. Most of these are very minor, but a couple of entries provide the unwary reader with inaccurate information. The entry for seal is one such example. It would appear that Beal is unaware of the physical properties of true sealing wax (as opposed to shellac) and as a result provides a misleading account of how seal impressions were made and attached to documents. Even though this is in general a very reliable work, such mistakes make one feel that certain points could and should have been double-checked prior to publication.

The select bibliography (452–57) is prefaced by the caveat that it is indeed very selective and only provides a brief guide to the numerous sources available for further study. While this is understandable—any attempt at a comprehensive bibliography would almost have doubled the length of the book—the choice of recommended texts is somewhat idiosyncratic. Letters and letterbooks have five suggestions for further reading, for example, but illuminated manuscripts have only one recommended text, as do the subjects of binding and conservation. There are also a number of surprising omissions and inclusions in the bibliography, choices that will no doubt create some discussion among manuscript scholars and bibliographers.

This is an ambitious book that attempts to cover a very wide range of subjects, material, and fields of study and to present them to a broad audience. One feels that it might perhaps have been more appropriate to call the book a guide rather than a dictionary, with the latter's connotations of uniform authority, but as a general introduction to postmedieval manuscripts, Beal's new book is a useful “first stop” work of reference that fills a gap in bibliographic literature.