The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. But we generally think much less about the countless men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe their existence.

This entrancing book describes some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years. A monk in Normandy, a prince of France, a Florentine bookseller, an English antiquary, a rabbi from central Europe, a French priest, a Keeper at the British Museum, a Greek forger, a German polymath, a British connoisseur and the woman who created the most spectacular library in America – all of them were participants in what Christopher de Hamel calls the Manuscripts Club.

This exhilarating fraternity, and the fellow enthusiasts who come with it, throw new light on how manuscripts have survived and been used by very different kinds of people in many different circumstances. Christopher de Hamel’s unexpected connections and discoveries reveal a passion which crosses the boundaries of time. We understand the manuscripts themselves better by knowing who their keepers and companions have been.

In 1850 (or thereabouts) John Ruskin bought his first manuscript ‘at a bookseller’s in a back alley’. This was his reaction: ‘The new worlds which every leaf of this book opened to me, and the joy I had in counting their letters and unravelling their arabesques as if they had all been of beaten gold – as many of them were – cannot be told.’ The members of de Hamel’s club share many such wonders, which he brings to us with scholarship, style, and a lifetime’s experience.

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Ever since he saw the legendary player known as “the Little Giant” compete at the national volleyball finals, Shoyo Hinata has been aiming to be the best volleyball player ever! Who says you need to be tall to play volleyball when you can jump higher than anyone else?

The Art of Haikyu!! collects the dynamic and lush color art from the hit manga series, including chapter title pages, illustrations, bonus sketches, and more from creator Haruichi Furudate!

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The absence of wars, banishing the memories and horrors of past massacres, favoured the development of epic tales that gave rise to dark and terrifying atmospheres, such as the game of the hundred candles, a test of courage in which a handful of warriors meet on a summer night to tell each other scary stories populated by monsters from the national tradition. So we have the Joro¯ gumo, comely women who reveal their true nature as enormous spiders to their victims; the Tanuki, endearing badgers able to transform themselves; the Bakeneko, monstrous cats; the Kappa, aquatic beings that pester women; the Ningyo, mermaids whose fragrant flesh can give men renewed youth or an excruciating death.

The macabre ritual of the hundred candles is the great idea behind this original project that presents 200 works from the 18th and 19th centuries, including prints, rare antique books, clothes, weapons, swords, a samurai suit of armour, as well as seventy-seven precious netsuke, small ivory sculptures, from the Bertocchi private collection and a ten-metre long scroll that tells the story of Shutendoji, a mythological creature (Oni) at the head of an army of monsters that haunted Mount Oe near Kyoto. Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Villa Reale in Monza, the book is a real journey of discovery of Japanese imagery, ranging from Hokusai’s famous manga notebooks (alongside his other masterpieces) to the works of Loputyn, the contemporary illustrator well known to hotaku manga enthusiasts.

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