The Voynich Manuscript

Locations
Call Number: 025.341 Vo Oversize
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	025.341 Vo Oversize	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Introduction / Deborah Harkness -- Preface / Raymond Clemens -- The Voynich manuscript : [facsimile reproduction] -- Earliest owners / René Zandbergen -- Voynich the buyer / Arnold Hunt -- Physical findings / Paula Zyats [and five others] -- Cryptographic attempts / William Sherman -- Alchemical traditions / Jennifer M. Rampling -- The world's most mysterious manuscript / Raymond Clemens -- Chronology.
"The fifteenth-century work commonly known as the Voynich Manuscript is often called the world's most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript appears and disappears throughout history, from the library of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to a secret sale of books in 1903 by the Society of Jesus in Rome. The book's language has eluded decipherment, and its elaborate illustrations remain as baffling as they are beautiful. For the first time, this facsimile, complete with reproductions of elaborate folding sections, allows readers to explore this enigma in all its stunning detail, from its one-of-a-kind 'Voynichese' text to its illustrations of otherworldly plants, unfamiliar constellations, and naked women swimming though fantastical tubes and green baths. The essays that accompany the manuscript explain what we have learned about this work--from alchemical, cryptographic, forensic, and historical perspectives--but they provide few definitive answers. Instead, as New York Times best-selling author Deborah Harkness says in her introduction, the book's essays 'invite the reader to join us at the heart of the mystery.'"-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Interesting submitted by zmclaugh on July 15, 2019, 8:59pm A strange manuscript to leaf through,