An educational and informational site about rare, old and antiquarian books.
Les Enluminures owner, Dr. Sandra Hindman, is a leading expert on manuscript illumination. Professor Emerita of Art History at Northwestern University, she is author, coauthor, or editor of more than a dozen books, as well as numerous articles on the history and reception of illuminated manuscripts and on medieval rings. These publications include The Robert […]
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Privacy concerns have disrupted lives long before investigators attacked Apple for refusing to aid federal agents bypass a security passcode function on a terrorist’s iPhone. These days, anything that happens through our lives is collected, shared, analyzed, marketed and remarketed, sometimes with our consent, and often without. New generations find it hard to imagine a […]
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A 16-page Don McLean manuscript, featuring the lyrics of the iconic song, American Pie, including the writer’s notes and an extra verse which was never recorded, was auctioned by Christie’s in New York on April 7, 2015. The manuscript achieved the 3rd highest auction price for an American literary manuscript selling for $1,205,000 (€1,109,182), including […]
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During the Golden Age of Islamic science, (750 to 1258 AD) European medical practice was influenced by the important contributions of Muslims such as Al-Razi “Rhazes” (d. 925), Abul Quasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas al-Zahrawi “Albucasis” (940 – 1013), Ibn Sina (d. 1037). Al-Zahrawi considered to be the father of modern surgery, diagnosed and treated many […]
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Among some of the most important poems in the English language lies Ode to a Nightingale. The poem, written by John Keats in 1819, is probably the most famous of his Great Odes, which also include Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, Fancy, and To Autumn. The collection is published in the third […]
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The oldest surviving epic poem of Old English, the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature, is also a great example of how a manuscript’s condition affected the impression it had on writers and scholars through the centuries. Beowulf, like most Old English poems, has no title in the unique manuscript in which it survives in […]
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At the end of the 18th century, a Russian poet by the name of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born in Moscow. The date was June 6th, 1799, and the newborn was to become the father and founder of modern Russian literature during a century considered to be the most important century in Russian literature. Pushkin […]
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No other copy of the Voynich manuscript, “the world’s most mysterious manuscript,” exists in any other collection in the world, besides the one at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The book was donated to the university library in 1969 through a gift of the legendary rare book dealer, Hans P. Kraus, who […]
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Recently Sotheby’s has auctioned a rare manuscript of an unfinished novel written by the well known and famous writer/novelist, Jane Austen. This rare manuscript was sold for the astronomical amount of 993.250 Sterling Pounds (1623K USD) to the Bodleian Oxford library and one can say that it stayed ‘’home’’ in the UK. Rare manuscripts have […]
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