“Opening of St. Luke's Gospel” from “The Origin and Progress of Writing” illuminated by Henry Noel Humphreys, 1810-79

Opening of St. Luke's Gospel

Henry Noel Humphreys, 1810-79

1853

26 x 17.7 cm.

Source: The Origin and Progress of the Art of Writing

Beckwith, Victorian Bibliomania catalogue no. 17

A written language was the mark of civilization, according to nineteenth-century scholars. Therefore, the study of ancient writing revealed the history and progress of a culture and was used as a reference point in establishing the appearance of the first cultures. Writing was further ennobled by Henry Noel Humphreys as the enemy of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition. [Continued below]

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Updike Collection of Books on Printing, Providence Public Library

Commentary by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith

He tells us in his introduction that he wrote The Origin and Progress of the Art of Writing in order to make the public aware of the recent discoveries by Botta and Layard about the historic records of the Assyrian Empire; no book, he said, was in print which "traced every missing link" in the development of writing. Humphrey differed from earlier British paleographers by including languages outside the Indo-European group, such as the language of Pre-Columbian Mexico which was discussed first in his text (Friedman. ill. 167). Avoiding narrow nationalism, Humphreys set written English in a more global context.

Twenty-eight plates supplement Humphreys's text, which is further enriched with woodcut diagrams and initial letters. Twelve of the plates are chromolithographed, and again one becomes aware of how Humphreys's ability as an artist served his aspirations as an historian. While he was egalitarian in his coverage of many cultures, he did illustrate (without naming it) one of the most spectacular manuscripts ever written in Britain, the Lindisfarne Gospels (ca. A.D. 698). He had pictured the same folio 139 in his Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (cat. 16), but there he showed the entire page. It appears that he either reused the same lithographic stone here, only inking the section of it that fit the smaller size of the plates in The Origin and Progress of the Art of Writing, or he transferred the printed section onto a smaller stone. Nonetheless, he persisted in the smaller format in showing the illuminated initial in conjunction with the rest of the text on the page, and did not isolate it as Shaw and Westwood would have (cats. 14, 15).

Comparison of Humphreys's rendering with photographs (Backhouse, plate i) of the original manuscript reveal that while his facsimile is unusually accurate for a book printed before photolithography, it is in general less bright and less crisp in its details. This book was attractive to general readers for the clarity of its prose, the beauty of the chromolithography, and the sculptural fascination of the original black papier-mâché cover, which is illustrated in Ruari McLean's Victorian Book Design. By introducing the general reader to the study of ancient writing, Humphreys contributed to the growing public awareness of manuscript illumination and further stimulated Victorian bibliomania.

References

Beckwith, Alice H. R. H. Victorian Bibliomania: The Illuminated Book in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Exhibition catalogue. Providence. Rhode Island: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1987.

Humphreys, Henry Noel. The Origin and Progress of the Art of Writing. London: Ingram Cooke & Co. 1853. Printer: Robson, Levey & Franklyn. Chromolithography: Henry Noel Humphreys, Day and Son.

McLean, Ruari. Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing. 2nd edition. [London]: Faber & Faber, [1972].

Last modified 26 December 2013