This is a bibliography of resources for manuscript study created and maintained by Laura Estill.
Many of these sites focus on British manuscripts from the early modern period.
NOTE: Some of these sites require subscription access, so you will have to log in through your home institution.
St. John's College, Cambridge, MS S.32, f. 6v.
This image courtesy of St John's College, Cambridge, and Scriptorium: Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Online.
Online Manuscripts
British Literary Manuscripts Online
Some Bodleian and Oxford MS facsimiles online
More Bodleian MSS (Luna)
Folger links to online manuscripts
Brotherton Collection
Digital Scriptorium (Manuscripts) (Columbia)
Cambridge Digital Scriptorium
Wellcome library: incl. 17th C receipt books, many by women
Harvard views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History
UPenn MSS
Bodleian ArtStor images from MSS
(see also BL online illuminated MSs and images online)
Digital Donne MSS
Perdita Project
Irish MSS
Welsh MSS (National Library of Wales)
Digital Wordsworth
Emily Dickinson
Medieval MSS on the web (meta-resource)
Digitized Medieval Manuscripts - UCLA
Jane Austen, Blake, Lewis Caroll and others
Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts
Keats at Harvard
Byron at Nottingham
Pound at Yale
Rossetti Archive
Defining Gender 1450-1910: Five Centuries of Advice Literature Online (mostly print, some manuscript)
Shelley-Godwin Archive
William Godwin Diary
Beyond English Manuscripts
CERL list of Union Catalogues
Calames: Online Catalogue (with links to facsimiles)
Catalogue Collectif de France
Transcription Tools
T-PEN
Some ongoing projects use http://beta.fromthepage.com to transcribe their information. Have a look to see what's up-and-coming...
Online Manuscript Catalogues
Leeds (Brotherton)
British Library's Manuscript Catalogue
BL Catalogue of Illuminated MSs
Bodleian Library Info (see also http://ox.libguides.com/content.php?pid=125525&sid=1305126)
Bodleian Library Online Catalogue (incomplete)
Bodleian Forthcoming Electronic Catalogue
Beinecke at Yale
National Library of Scotland Manuscripts
Hamnet (Folger)
Folger Microfilm Catalogue
Huntington Library MS Catalogue
University of Aberdeen Catalogue
University of Michigan British Manuscripts Project (ACLS microfilms)
National Church Database of Manuscripts (Lambeth Palace, etc.)
Christ Church, Oxford, Online Music MSCatalogue
Cambridge MSS (Janus catalogue) - Fitzwilliam museum, etc
Harvard Houghton (at bottom of page)
De Ricci's Census (Uvic access; Hathi trust)
Background resources
First Line Indices
Nelson's Union Index (Folger)
17th C First Line Index (Mark McDayter, Western)
Seng's Houghton Harvard Index
Donne Variorum First Line Indexes
Adam Smyth's Print Miscellany Index
English Clandestine Satire (Harold Love, Meredith Sherlock, Felicity Henderson)
Textbase of Early Tudor English 1485-1550 (UOtago)
Index of Middle English Verse
For Researching Manuscripts
A Manuscript Miscellany (Steven May's 2005 Folger course)
Norbrook's Online Bibliography (also has provenance)
British Library info on Manuscript Resources
Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts (Stephen R. Reimer, U of Alberta) (includes massive bibliography)
University of London Manuscript Portal
A Guide to Locating French Manuscripts
Provenance/History Info
For England: links and sources
Access to Archives
National Archives
State Papers Online (Part 1: 1509-1603)
ODNB
Victoria County History (British History Online)
Clergy of the Church of England Database
Private Libraries in Renaissance England Search (PLRE; Folger)
Private Libraries in Renaissance England homepage
Inner Temple Admissions Database
Paleography
National Archives Paleography
English Handwriting 1500-1700: An Online Course (Cambridge U; different from below)
English Handwriting: An Online Course (Cambridge U Scriptorium)
InScribe Paleography Course
Early Modern Paleography
French Paleography Course
Scottish Paleography (v. good; 16-18th C)
Paleography Terminology (Stanford)
Literary Manuscript Analysis (Heaton at Warwick)
Leeds Brotherton Paleography
Secretary Hand Alphabet (basic; Genlinks)
Secretary Hand Alphabet Page (about)
The Secretarie Alphabete
Early Hands (up to 16th C Secretary); Meg Twycross (incl. how to describe link)
Watermarks
The Thomas L. Gravell Watermark Archive
Watermarks in Jonson's 1616 Works
Some Watermarks (not many)
Print Watermark Sources: Briquet, Churchill, Heawood
Other Resources
Early Stuart Libels
LiteratureOnline (LiOn) Q5ghjD33
LEME: Lexicons of Early Modern English (Lancashire)
English Manuscript Studies Tables of Contents
Oxford Text Archive
Late Medieval English Scribes (incl. descr. of many Harley catalogues)
Reading Experiences Database (1450-1945)
Link Pages
Textual Studies 1500-1800 (Kevin Curran; AWESOME links)
Warwick History List of Links to know before you go to archives
Folger links
A Manuscript Miscellany (Steven May's 2005 Folger course)
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Theatre History Links
Paleography, Codicology, Bibliography links (Robert D. Peckham)
Texts, Manuscripts, Palaeography (Jay Treat)
Justin's Theatre Links (Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline history links)
REED's All The World's a Stage
U of Reading Early Modern Studies Links
Restoration Theatre links
Textual Scholarship
Medieval MSS (and some Emod) MS facsimile & microfilm links (Charles Wright)
http://earlymodernweb.org/
Medieval Genealogy Links (incl. early modern)
Print-related info
EEBO
English Short Title Catalogue
Database of Early English Playbooks (UPenn: Alan B. Farmer and Zachary Lesser)
Shakespearean Promptbooks of the Seventeenth Century (G. Blakemore Evans)
British Book Trade Index
ECCO
Jonson's first folio (digitized, searchable) Holloway
Renaissance and Restoration Printing (U South Carolina)
Index of Books and Pamphlets Censored in the British Isles and British North American between 1641 and 1700
English Renaissance in Context (ERIC; UPenn) incl. tutorials on book history and Shakespeare's plays
Digital Miscellanies Index (18th C: Leverhulme, Oxford, Bodleian)
OpenEmblem (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne; being revised) Emblem Books
John Foxe's Acts and Monuments online edition
More's Utopia online edition
Warburg Institute digitized books
Manuscript-Related Blogs
Sloane Letters
The Folger Library's Collation
Early Modern Bibliography Online
The Huntington Library's Verso
The Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance Studies Blog
The BL's Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts Blog
The BL's English and Drama Blog
Questions? email me (Laura) at 
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