SMC 34

Manuscript albums are oftentimes contradictory objects: ephemeral yet monumental, coherent yet inviting change. Collecting items made by others, owners form their albums as representations of their selves, their worlds, and their traditions. The volume’s contributors – who come from musicology, European history, English literary studies, and Islamic art history – explore a set of these challenging manuscripts while addressing questions of manuscript studies through their respective disciplinary lenses. The albums under investigation range from Early Modern Stammbücher, or alba amicorum, to albums assembled jointly by nineteenth-century cultural elites, and from muraqqa’s of the Persianate world to English and North American friendship albums, including some kept by women. This book is the first contribution to the comparative study of manuscript albums, focusing on their materiality and analysing the practices of all those involved in making and using them. Moreover, the collection introduces this hard-to-grasp type of written artefact to the field of cross-disciplinary manuscript studies and suggests albums as a touchstone for manuscriptological theories and terminologies.

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FrontmatterI

ContentsV

Introduction: Manuscript Albums as Touchstones for Manuscript Studies 1
Janine Droese and Janina Karolewski

Album Amicorum, Commonplace Book, and Lute Book35
Oliver Huck

Caspar von Abschatz’s Album Amicorum: Collecting (in) the Ottoman World 63
Robyn Dora Radway

Cruel Conquerors and a Solomonic Saint: European Collectors’ Interests in Indian Muraqqaʿs125
Friederike Weis

Bugs in Books167
Deidre Lynch

Albums as Monuments: On the Production and Use of Public Albums in Nineteenth-century Germany 189
Janine Droese

Nineteenth-century Musik-Stammbücher: Variety of Material and Contexts of Use 249
Henrike Rost

Contributors277

Index of Manuscripts279

General Index383