The Pepys Library holds a number of manuscript and printed book fragments.  In 1700 these fragments were deliberately collected and arranged by Samuel Pepys into his ‘Calligraphical’ albums, with added written commentary by Pepys’s associate Humfrey Wanley.  The appearance of the fragments in the album is much like a scrapbook, and they are arranged in a chronological order to demonstrate how handwriting styles changed over time.  An image of the whole page of the album on which each fragment appears is also displayed, to show the arrangement of the fragments in their wider context.

• Rosamond McKitterick and Joyce Irene Whalley, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College Cambridge. Volume 4, Music, Maps and Calligraphy. Woodbridge: Brewer, 1989.
  → Show description