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A: Oxford, England, United Kingdom

The Oldest Known English Public Advertisement Survived as Stiffening Inside a Bookbinding

Circa 1340
Fragment of a poster advertising styles of writing, Oxford, c. 1340. Bodleian Library MS. e Mus. 198* F. 8r
Fragment of a poster advertising styles of writing, Oxford, c. 1340. Bodleian Library MS. e Mus. 198*

Portions of an early poster written on parchment by a professional Gothic scribe were found as part of the stiffening inside a bookbinding made in Oxford about 1340. This is Bodleian MS e. Mus. 198* f.8.

"The fragments come from a single sheet, written on one side only in a whole range of different Gothic scripts, and they are stained and weathered. The supposition is that the poster was once tacked up outside a stationer's shop (presumably in Oxford) until it became obsolete or was replaced and so was taken down and stored as a useful scrap of thick parchment. One day its pieces proved ideal for padding out a binding, and thus the oldest known English public advertisement has come down to us. It shows short specimens of twelve different scripts for different classes of liturgical manuscript, from a large choir psalter to little portable processionals with music. There are similar Continental specimens from the fifteenth century, advertising the range of hands available from the scribes Herman Stepl, of Münster in Westphalia, for example, or Robert of Tours in the diocese of Nantes. Presumably the customer came into the shop, looked over the patterns as one might a menu in a takeaway restaurant, and left an order for a particular script" (de Hamel, Medieval Craftsmen. Scribes and illuminators [1992] 39 and plate 31).

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