A 'catalogue of Hebrew printers'

Abstract

• FOR most of this century, an unbound manuscript of nearly a thousand leaves lay in the offices of the Hebrew Section of the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books of the British Museum (later the Oriental Collections of the British Library). Despite its bulk, the manuscript remained unaccessioned, apparently unrecognized or unnoticed by curatorial staff, and unknown to researchers in the Hebrew collections of the British Museum Library. Mercifully, the manuscript was not lost or discarded overtime, as was the fate of similar material in the past, although it was certainly forgotten. At the time of the move of the Oriental Collections from Store Street in Bloomsbury to Orbit House near Blackfriars, in 1991, its yellowed leaves were boxed and labelled, and for the first time brought to the attention of scholars.