ABSTRACT
The term ~~manuscript book" should first be defined. "Manuscript" is no problem; it means written by hand (although these days it is often paradoxically used to mean the opposite-written by machine, or at least typewriter or computer printer). But what is a "book"? In its most general extent, this term might refer to almost any portable material with handwriting on it: metal, stone, wax, clay, potsherds, or official articles like coins and seals. In the chapter on paleography, even walls are included as a medium for writing, since Pompeiian graffiti are the best-preserved remnants of certain Roman cursive styles. Walls, however, do not ordinarily qualify as "books," nor, for the purposes of the students for whom this book is intended, do the various tablets and other portable but basically non-literary objects on which writing may happen to occur. The discussion of books here is limited to those in the two most familiar forms: the roll, from which, through the Latin volumen, we now speak of "volumes, " and the codex, or folded and stitched book (from caudax, the trunk or bark of a tree). And the focus here will be almost entirely on the writing of such books in the West.
