Manuscript Road Trip: On the Road to Niagara

Manuscript Road Trip

As we leave the Berkshires, we’ll head due west on I-90, which, when it crosses into New York, becomes known as the New York State Thruway. Instead of turning south for Manhattan, however, we’ll keep going west (yes, there’s more to New York than NYC!), making our way (virtually, and therefore speedily) through central New York to Buffalo.

Not surprisingly, most medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the United States are to be found in university Special Collections libraries. There are, however, about two dozen public (municipal) libraries that, through good fortune and/or generous donors, count pre-1600 manuscripts among their holdings. In fact, our data suggest that public collections in the US hold more than 500 pre-1600 codices and more than 800 single leaves. The largest of these collections  belong to the New York Public Library and the Boston Public Library, but the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library in western New York is…

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