Scribes and Inky Fingerprints: Collaborative and Mediated Authorship in Early Modern English Manuscripts

In early modern England, the production of manuscript texts, whether literary, governmental or legal, was typically a collaborative or “socialized” enterprise, involving both professionals and amateurs. Indeed, the person a modern reader might automatically identify as “the author” rarely exerted sole influence over a text’s production: scribes and manuscript users might repurpose and adjust extracts from earlier literary contexts, while others commissioned intermediaries, such as secretaries or lawyers, to commit their words to paper. At first glance these intermediaries appear either frustratingly anonymous or, as members of a royal secretariat or court of law, institutionalised and thus indistinguishable. Nevertheless, all these contributors leave inky, authorial fingerprints on the final text, fingerprints that may allow us to identify their discrete, individual voices.

This three-day international conference hosted at Leiden University by the ERC Consolidator-funded FEATHERS project, with a keynote by Prof. Daniel Wakelin (Oxford University), aims to bring together researchers working on early modern scribal culture and manuscript production. With a particular focus on three distinct genres of the secular manuscript industry – literary texts, letters and legal records – the conference seeks to explore the agency and influence of scribes, scribblers, secretaries, scriveners, and other manuscript users in order to shed light on their role in the production of early modern manuscripts.

Whilst participants will be expected to cover the costs of their own travel, accommodation, and conference registration, there will be a limited number of bursaries available to support early career researchers without access to adequate institutional funding. If you wish to be considered for a bursary, please note this with your proposal and explain why in a short paragraph or so.

This conference is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 864635, FEATHERS).