*It's the art of reading old forms of hand-writing. A lot of those antique documents, even in English, are well-nigh inexplicable nowadays unless you know what you're doing with them.
by Brodie Waddell
Online resources
The National Archives has an excellent free online tutorial for palaeography, 1500-1800. It also has dozens of extra documents in its ‘Further Practice’ section.
The English Faculty at Cambridge has another free online module: ‘English Handwriting 1500-1700’, which includes a 17th-century handwriting manual and help with dating particular scripts.
The Institute for Historical Research has a free online module: ‘InScribe Palaeography Learning Materials’
Oxford’s Rediscovering Rycote project has a very short online tutorial, with some extra exercises.
Simon Booth’s English Renaissance Handwriting iPod/iPhone App seems promising, though I have not tried it.
Brigham Young University’s ‘Script Tutorial’ includes palaeography exercises in English, German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
National Records of Scotland’s Scottish Handwriting, 1500-1800 includes a one-hour basic online tutorial and much else. Useful for non-Scots material too.
The Folger Shakespeare Library has a crowdsourced online transcription project: Shakespeare’s World. It is great fun, and also includes palaeographical guidance.
MarineLives is a crowdsourced transcription project that provides palaeography training to its volunteers.
Bess of Hardwick’s Letters Reading Early Modern Handwriting tutorial, with 18 examples of particular hands.
Dianne Tillotson’s Medieval Writing
Dave Postle’s Medieval and Early Modern Palaeography information, exercises and more. You can also download the programme to run on your computer.
Medieval Abbreviations for deciphering Latin texts.
The Newberry Library’s French Renaissance Palaeography project, with tutorials and more.
French ‘Bibliographie de paléographie’ by Marc Smith.
Marjorie Burghart et al. have created an interactive album of mediaeval palaeography.
Offline training
The Institute for Historical Research in London offers some in-person courses for reasonable fees.
The Warburg Institute in London offers a variety of research training and reading groups, sometimes including Latin palaeography.
If you are a university student, there is a decent chance there is palaeography training available on campus. Ask your tutor.
Many archives, record offices and local history groups offer palaeography training.
Books
Hilary Marshall, Palaeography for Family and Local Historians (2004) is an excellent handbook, packed with examples, which I found very helpful when starting out and which I still use on occasion
B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (1990)
E. Boyle, Medieval Latin palaeography: a bibliographical introduction (1984)
P. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (1990)
P. Brown, The British Library Guide to Writing and Scripts (1998)
N. Buat and E. van den Neste, Manuel de paléographie française (2016)
G. Cencetti, Paleografia Latina (1978)
P. Cherubini and A. Pratesi, Paleografia latina. L’avventura grafica del mondo occidentale (2010)
E. Gooder, Latin for Local History, 2nd ed. (1978).
C. Johnson and H. Jenkinson, English Court Hand, AD 1066 to 1500 (1915).
T. Martin, The record interpreter: a collection of abbreviations, Latin words and names used in English historical manuscripts and records (2nd edn., London, 1910). Free online at archive.org
C. Newton, Medieval Local Records: a Reading Aid (1971)
J. Roberts, Guide to Scripts used in English Writings up to 1500 (2005)
A. Robinson, The Story of Writing: Alphabets, Hieroglyphs, and Pictograms (1995)
J. Stiennon, Paléographie du Moyen Age (1973)
