The Gothic cursive scripts of the 15th to 17th centuries in England, and elsewhere in Europe, are among the hardest to read of all the scripts normally considered by palaeographers.

Foreword by T. J. Brown.

The brief success of William Henry Ireland's crude Shakespeare forgeries, about 1800, shows how little attention had up to that time been paid to the handwriting of the sixteenth century.

Preface.

Until quite recently all literature, most records, and most communications other than those spoken were written by hand.

Introduction.