Manly's views about the Voynich MS

[ReneZ]

Nick wrote:

If anyone has access to articles written by John Matthews Manly about the Voynich I'd be very interested to see them. I suspect that he had a different opinion again, but it would be nice to know either way for sure.

I am aware of three papers:

1. The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World: Did Roger Bacon Write It and Has the Key Been Found? in Harper's Monthly Magazine 143 (1921): pp. 186-97
   
2. Roger Bacon's Cypher Manuscript, American Review of Reviews, LXIV, 1921, pp.105-106
   
3. Roger Bacon and the Voynich MS. Speculum 6, July 1931, pp. 345-391
   

The second is probably a summary of the first and I don't have it. I have the other two, but suspect so has Nick. The first is a fence-sitting review of Newbold, while the third is a refutation.

More interesting is what Manly thought himself about what the text represents.
There is a note by Anne Nill in the Grolier Library that says:

Prof. Manly in his letter of March 26, 1920, to W.M.V says:
"I still think there is a possibility that the cipher is less complicated than he [Prof.Newbold]  believes, and is largely disguised by the use of nulls. As we are entirely ignorant of the language underlying the cipher, it seems me the only way  in which the nulls can be isolated is by comparing the relative frequencies of the symbols on a considerable number of pages. I have as you know, eight sheets. This number is, I think, hardly sufficient for the purpose in question.

It seems that Voynich then sent him more sheets. Also, he had sent a similar letter to Newbold.

The first letter is likely to be preserved in the Beinecke, but I have not seen it.