Alchemy, medicine, and commercial book production

Alpo Honkapohja

"The Voigts-Sloane group of Middle English manuscripts, first described by Professor Emerita Linda Voigts in 1990, has attracted much curiosity and scholarly attention. The manuscripts exhibit a degree of uniformity that may originate from systematic copying of medical and alchemical manuscripts (possibly for speculative sale) in London or its metropolitan area in 1450s and 1460s - only decades before William Caxton established his printing press in Westminster. Some of the manuscripts share a strikingly similar mise-en-page, others present a standard anthology of medical treatises in a standard order. This book provides a thorough re-examination of these manuscripts through a combination of codicological and linguistic methodologies. It examines different procedures which may have facilitated the production of the manuscripts, including speculative production and copying of separate...