Guillaume Coatalen, Senior lecturer in early modern English literature at CY Cergy Paris Université (France) (guillaumecoatalen@hotmail.com)
The purpose of the database is to help identify hands and study them according to various criteria like the writer’s name, gender, age, social status, profession and location.
Some hands belong to professional scribes.
Here are the original files I compiled:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xkvpKhdpTydQm8GM48OFWHvhn0BLwZfUIpmlB_N4hrw/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F3YemoXjzk3YYNHDcpVwbQQM4IUgAFxTg5AWEOh7mS0/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XlrP-pgk9QIr3KiBzBJH4Vgb71KRDVHxlDqHNEdbFfw/edit?usp=sharing
Many thanks to Michael Pearce for letting me include pictures of Anne or Anna Livingstone, Countess of Eglinton’s and Helenor or Eleanor Hay, Countess of Livingstone’s hands
Many thanks to Yelda Nasifoglu for helping me add hands of members of the Royal Society
Many thanks to Jane Giscombe for letting me include pictures of Bartholomew Dodington’s hands
A Database of Early Modern Hands
For a map of where the manuscripts were written, click here