Sandars Lectures 2021: Lecture One

Sandars Lectures 2021: Lecture One Paper in Time The Sandars Readership in Bibliography is one of the most prestigious honorary posts to which book historians, librarians and researchers can be appointed. Those elected deliver a series of lectures on their chosen subject. This year’s first lecture tells the story of paper’s relation to time. Only tentatively can we date the majority of medieval books produced in Britain. Such ambiguity hinders how we can contextualise and discuss the texts written in them and the social interactions that medieval books enjoyed. The lecture will discuss how the study of paper can contribute to a chronology of medieval British books, it will consider some of the principles of such chronology and propose that ‘sequencing paper’ can be as distinctive and exciting as sequencing the human genome. Dr Orietta Da Rold is an Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College. She has published widely on medieval textual cultures and manuscript studie