His descriptions are lengthy, his prose is jam-packed with commas and clauses. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913)įor any reader of Proust’s masterpiece, it is immediately clear just how dense the narration is. Through the manuscript of Frankenstein, we see the process of composition for all its collaborative richness-something we surely wouldn’t get had Mary enlisted her husband’s help via word processor or typewriter. Two distinct sets of handwriting can be found on its pages, one belonging to Mary, and the other to her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, who ultimately contributed some 5,000 words to the novel’s total 72,000. What adds to the distinction of the papers is that there is not only one masterful hand at work in them. The original Frankenstein manuscript is held at the Bodleian Library at Oxford. John Polidori produced the modern vampire story, Lord Byron composed his apocalyptic poem, “Darkness,” but most significant was Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, Frankenstein.īyron had posed a challenge for all of his guests to create a ghost story, which is apparently something the English are wont to do when it’s cold outside. In 1816, otherwise known as the "Year Without a Summer," a group of talented writers were cooped up around Lake Geneva. His hand dominates the document, although Alexander Hamilton’s handwriting can be found toward the end with the listing of the states. Penned on four leaves of vellum parchment, a clerk named Jacob Shallus was paid $30 (around $800 today) to transcribe it. In 1947, the earliest known version of the document was found, called the "Composition Draft." A third draft, known as the "Fine Copy," is suspected to have been used for the July 4th, 1776 printing of the official Dunlap copies, but has not yet been found.īut nothing reveals the American love for the handwritten like the official draft of the US Constitution. Jefferson kept what is called the "Rough Draft," a four page early version of the document, until his death. Jefferson, as the chief draftsman of the Declaration of Independence, worked through a series of drafts and consultations to compose the Colonies’ eloquent call to arms. The Founding Fathers had an evident preference for writing their official documents. The United States was built, and written, by hand. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (17) The medieval writer Gerald of Wales reflected upon the book, “you might say that all this were the work of an angel, and not of a man.” And today, its visitors can experience much the same feeling. Displayed in the library at Trinity College Dublin, it remains one of the few books in the world to attract vast swaths of tourists. The Book of Kells contains more than some of the finest handwriting known in Europe: as an artifact of bookmaking, as an illuminated manuscript, and as a pure work of art, Kells has few equals.Ĭreated circa 800 AD, The Book of Kells contains the Latin Gospels of the New Testament. 800)īecause human history has in large part been preserved by the scribe, we include The Book of Kells as an exemplary piece of Western calligraphy, a culmination of a rich human tradition that has left lamentably little behind. Below, we reflect on some of the most important manuscripts written by hand that we are lucky enough to have today. But that would mean ignoring the many hands that have worked and worked to provide us with our reading, our fulfillment, our culture. We can condemn handwriting for its inconveniences and inefficiencies. Shakespeare may have suffered a similar fate, as a writer who luckily had the printing press to immortalize his works -he leaves us with nearly nothing written by hand. Aeschylus wrote some eighty plays, of which only seven survive. Think of all the masterpieces of antiquity (if you can bear it) that were lost to rot and ruin because scribes could only produce a handful of them at a time. Not only did it make books more accessible, it gave the works themselves unprecedented longevity. Some historians consider Gutenberg’s press, the very device that liberated us from writing by hand, to be the single most important invention of the second millennium. Why work laboriously and imperfectly on something that takes days to cross the country, when the computer will set it in flawless text that can be transmitted instantly?Ī careful look at the grand history of handwriting is not kind to the craft, either. In the digital age, it is no secret that calligraphy is a dying art. Although it feels like nearly everything has its own holiday now, it might help to reflect on the subject of January 23, or National Handwriting Day.
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