For anybody interested in how the Latin classics reached us – the manuscripts, the process of copying down the centuries – the standard work has been Texts and Transmissions by L. D. Reynolds. Author by author, text by text, we are told whatever is known about how the work was copied.
Justin Stover of Edinburgh University has now edited a two-volume successor text, to be called The Oxford Guide to the Transmission of the Latin Classics. It is to be published by Oxford University Press. It will include all the secular Latin texts to about 500 AD, including technical texts for the first time. The entries will be shorter, but the scope will be more comprehensive.
I’m not sure when the work is due to appear, but the entries have been written and the book is now in the works at OUP.
Dr Stover has also started a twitter account to promote the book, with daily pictures of manuscripts. It can be found here.
Texts and Transmissions was always a favourite for bedside reading for me, so I am very much looking forward to this one.
Yes, this will be wonderful! Next, hopefully someone can do the same for Greek texts (a far larger job I’m afraid).
It would be wonderful. But yes, much more.
Just a quick correction: it is not quite yet with the press, but it should be within the year.
Ah thank you!!!