Posted on May 16, 2019 at 2:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
We shared coverage of certain vintage books yesterday — but in terms of age and significance, they may not hold a candle to the ones we’re blogging about today.
And like yesterday’s post on copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and David Copperfield, this one combines the controversial with the classic.
First, the controversial: A British academic claims he’s cracked the mystery of the Voynich manuscript, a document whose language has eluded such minds as Alan Turing and the Cold War-era FBI.
Gerard Cheshire, a research associate at the University of Bristol, has published a peer-reviewed paper arguing that the fifteenth-century manuscript is written in the lost language of “proto-Romance” and that it’s a therapeutic manual of sorts.
Other scholars quoted in the Guardian’s article are skeptical of his claims, but history and linguistic geeks are encouraged to read Cheshire’s claims in full.
And the classic: After five years of restoration, the Winchester Bible will soon be on public display.
Visitors to Winchester Cathedral will be able to see four volumes of the original book from a safe distance and browse through a digitized version.
The Winchester Bible dates back to the twelfth century and weighs about 70 pounds ... and it wasn’t even finished.
Andrew Honey, a book conservator at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, had this to say to the Guardian about it: “You don’t get grander than this.”
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Categories: Today in Books