David Casley

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David Casley (* around 1681/82; † 1754 ) was an English bibliographer living in the first half of the 18th century .

Casley worked since 1719 under the librarian Richard Bentley (1693-1725) at the Royal Library in London . From 1732 he was busy compiling a catalog of the royal manuscripts, which appeared under the title A Catalog of the manuscripts in the King's Library (London 1734). Included in this work is a list of the Cotton Library manuscripts ; it documents the holdings of this library after the destruction caused by a fire that raged in Ashburnham House in 1731 . In a comprehensive foreword to his catalog, Casley provides a palaeographic treatise with approximate orientation aids. For the dating of manuscripts, these include the writing, the quality of the parchment as well as the spelling and the appearance of the individual sheets. In the introduction the author also deals with the history of book decoration, first bringing Hieronymus' explanations on purple manuscripts with gold and silver script and placing the emphasis on late antique and island illumination .

literature

Remarks

  1. ^ Joachim Rex: Contributions to the book and library system , Vol. 44, 2002, p. 27 ( online on Google Books).
  2. Michaela Bräsel: Illumination in art history , 2009, p 287 ( online at Google Books).