“This Warm Scribe, My [Profitable] Hand”

Abstract

The survival or loss of literary manuscripts has always depended upon many factors, but questions of value are chief among them: the cultural value, or otherwise, ascribed to them by authors, collectors, publishers, libraries, funders, and government agencies; and the commercial value, determined in part by cultural value but also through questions of rarity, authenticity, competition, fashion, and research potential. This chapter explores these issues through the consideration of manuscript examples ranging from the first manuscript in the English language to survive wholly in the hand of its author, dating from c. 1200, to digital texts accruing monetary value through non-fungible tokens. It looks at how authors have ignored or embraced their manuscripts as financial assets and how that may affect their textual meaning; how contingencies surrounding funding or legislation, particularly export control, contribute to our understanding of the literary canon; and how institutional collaboration or competition, together with decisions made in the book trade can shape the archival landscape. Finally, it speculates about the implications for the material literary manuscript, as a tangible witness to the writer’s hand and an artefact relatively easy to value in commercial terms, in a world where collectors are beginning to privilege digital artefacts.