Author: Simran Thadani

Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Writing about Writing in Early Modern Writing-Books

Simran Thadani

Mar 4, 2015

Starting in the 1520s, European penmen began to put out printed pamphlets that taught people how to write speedily, legibly, and beautifully. Through these so-called “writing-books,” writing-masters demonstrated their calligraphic skills through elaborate samples in different scripts, and codified the rules of good writing too. Interestingly, this means that the explosion of (fast, multiplicative) print…
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Welcome to Unique at Penn, part of the family of University of Pennsylvania Libraries blogs. This space will feature descriptions and contextualization of items from the collections of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. The site focuses on those materials held by Penn which are in some sense “unique” – drawn from both our special and circulating collections, whether a one-of-a-kind medieval manuscript or a twentieth-century popular novel with generations of student notes penciled inside. See the About page for more on the blog and to contact the editor.

Author: Simran Thadani

Writing about Writing in Early Modern Writing-Books