Reconstructing John Stow's Medieval Manuscript Annotations

The Tudor antiquary John Stow was crucial to the early modern writing of England's pre-modern past. His work forms a great part of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles—and therefore William Shakespeare’s history plays—and his Survey of London is still the best guide to the City as it stood before the Great Fire of 1666. Stow published some of Geoffrey Chaucer’s minor poems for the first time in his 1561 Chaucer edition; he also edited the first edition of John Skelton’s Works. Stow’s access to medieval manuscripts and early printed books seems to have rivalled that of the greatest Elizabethan book collectors. Dozens of codices containing marks in his distinctive handwriting survive, revealing the extensive network of readers to which Stow belonged, which included his fellow antiquary William Camden, the author Ben Jonson, Elizabeth I's Archbishop Matthew Parker, and the alchemist John Dee.

This exhibit is the work of the Old Books New Science Lab and the Digital Tools for Manuscript Study project at the University of Toronto. Our team has identified at least 75 manuscripts and several printed books in which notes in Stow’s handwriting appear. We are working towards the early 2021 release of a virtual library of images and transcriptions of these notes. If you would like access to this data in the meantime, please email Alexandra Gillespie to arrange a login to our private research site.

This exhibit presents just a selection of the manuscript images we have collected that feature annotations in Stow’s hand. Our choices highlight four themes in Stow’s practice as a reader and antiquary: his work as a historian, his interest in the literary work of Chaucer and John Lydgate, Stow's marks of ownership, and his scrupulous cross-referencing. We are especially interested in the way that, in these notes, Stow grapples with evidence of a “medieval” era that has been made distant by religious reform, iconoclasm, cultural renaissance, and the technology of printing, yet that remains present in the forms of old books.

Use the menu at the left side to explore the exhibit. Each image in this exhibit has notes in Stow’s hand that are indicated by blue outlines. Mouse over these outlines to reveal our team's transcription of these notes.