The Voynich Ninja

Notice of postponement posted on 13 March 2020. Laura Cleaver retweeted You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. annoucing that the event has been postponed.

UPDATE: the talk has been rescheduled for next week and will take place on Zoom 17:30–19:30 UK time on Tues 13 October 2020.

The talk is free to attend, but you have to register in advance. I have signed up, but I have not yet been sent the Zoom link.

Register here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.


Disclaimer 1: I do not think Laura plans to talk about the VMS.

Disclaimer 2: I am not Laura, but I do know (and like!) her.

Many thanks!

I registered and quite quickly received the Zoom link.
The registration requires a second confirmation on a second page, which could be easily missed.

(09-10-2020, 11:02 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Many thanks!

I registered and quite quickly received the Zoom link.
The registration requires a second confirmation on a second page, which could be easily missed.

Thanks Rene, your response prompted me to check my junk folder as I was sure I had seen some sort of final confirmation screen, and the zoom invitation had been marked as spam.

Hi, everyone, just wanted to add that Laura will definitely (and intentionally) NOT be discussing the VMS. She is working on a project studying networks of manuscript transmission in the early 20th century, focusing on manuscript dealers. I'm on the advisory committee for the project, and I can confirm that her team has made some important discoveries. It should be a great lecture!

The Voynich MS may have actually been mentioned a couple of times, but to speak with Basil Fawlty, Laura "got away with it all right". 

In any case, Voynich (the man) is about as fascinating as the MS named after him, and I found it very interesting to learn how much of his book business has been preserved and can be reconstructed.

The main thing I got away from the presentation is that Voynich really did not have all that much true knowledge and expertise about old books and manuscripts.

I would be happy to hear the opinion of anyone else here who attended.
I am looking forward already to the publication of this work.

(14-10-2020, 02:47 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The main thing I got away from the presentation is that Voynich really did not have all that much true knowledge and expertise about old books and manuscripts.

Is this more a general impression, or are there concrete examples (e.g. mispurchases) for this assessment ?

This was a general impression.

Actually, this does not surprise me. After all, becoming a bookseller was not his goal at first.
The book trade was first politically oriented to make money for his resistance. That is why he was in prison.
The way I see it, he stayed in the book trade when his partner had a fatal accident.
Even his professional training had little to do with books.

Voynich was, without a doubt, highly intelligent, and he also had excellent 'emotional intelligence' (as it is called nowadays). He certainly had to learn the trade, and he did, to the extent that he could compete at the highest level.

This study is looking critically at all available evidence, which includes opinions expressed about him by his contemporaries, and again, I am looking forward to a publication.