Christopher Francis Rivers de Hamel (born 20 November 1950) is a British academic librarian and expert on mediaeval

manuscripts A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has c ...

. He is a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Corpus Christi College (full name: "The College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary", often shortened to "Corpus") is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. From the late 14th c ...

, and former Fellow Librarian of the Parker Library. His book '' Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts'' is the winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for 2016 and the Wolfson History Prize for 2017.

Early life and education

Christopher de Hamel was born on 20 November 1950 in London, England. At the age of four he moved with his parents to New Zealand, where he was educated at King's High School, Dunedin, and graduated with an honours degree in history from the

University of Otago The University of Otago () is a public university, public research university, research collegiate university based in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand. Founded in 1869, Otago is New Zealand's oldest university and one of the oldest universities in ...

. He was subsequently awarded a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

(DPhil) degree by

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

for his research on 12th-century Bible commentaries. His thesis was titled "The production and circulation of glossed books of the Bible in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries". He has been awarded honorary Doctorates of Letters from the University of Otago and from St. John's University, Minnesota.

Career

Between 1975 and 2000 de Hamel worked for

Sotheby's Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

in its Western Manuscripts Department. He was elected as the Donnelley Fellow Librarian of

in 2000, and elected a member of the Roxburghe Club the following year. He held the 2003–2004 Sandars Readership in Bibliography. He delivered the 2009

Lyell Lectures The Lyell Readership in Bibliography is an endowed annual lecture series given at the University of Oxford. Instituted in 1952 by a bequest from the solicitor, book collector and bibliographer, James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell. After Lyell's death, ...

at Oxford University on the subject of "Fragments in Book Bindings". In 2017, his then-newly-published ''Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts'' was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, and won both the £40,000 Wolfson History Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize.

Published works

De Hamel has written a number of historical works within his field of expertise: * ''Geoffrey Chaucer – Prologue to the Canterbury Tales – A Hitherto Unrecorded Variant Reading'' (Privately printed, 1980) * ''A History of Illuminated Manuscripts'' (Phaidon, 1986; second revised edition, 1994) * ''Syon Abbey: The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and Their Peregrinations After the Reformation'' ( Roxburghe Club, 1991) * ''Scribes and Illuminators'' (

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, 1992) * ''The Book: A History of the Bible'' (Phaidon, 2001) * ''The Rothschilds and Their Collections of Illuminated Manuscripts'' (

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

, 2005) *''The Macclesfield Alphabet Book: A Facsimile'', with Patricia Lovett (British Library, 2010) * ''Gilding the Lilly: A Hundred Medieval and Illuminated Manuscripts in the Lilly Library'' ( Lilly Library,

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

, 2010) * '' Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts'' (Allen Lane, 2016) * ''Making Medieval Manuscripts'' (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2018) * ''The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of

Thomas Becket Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and then as Archbishop of Canterbury fr ...

'' (Allen Lane, 2020) * ''The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club'' (Allen Lane, 2022)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:de Hamel, Christopher Living people Historians of manuscript illumination Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University of Otago alumni People educated at King's High School, Dunedin Academic librarians English palaeographers Palaeographers 1950 births Fellows of the Royal Historical Society Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London People associated with the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles 20th-century New Zealand historians 21st-century New Zealand historians Wolfson History Prize winners

Early life and education

Career

Published works

References

See also