Dr Peter Beal, FBA, was for 25 years English Manuscript Expert (for nine of them a Director) at Sotheby's, London. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1993; was J.P.R. Lyell Reader in Bibliography at Oxford, 1995-96; and since 2002 has been Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, where he is currently building an AHRC-funded database Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700 (CELM). His major publications in the field of early modern manuscripts include Index of English Literary Manuscripts, 1450-1700 (4 volumes, 1980-93) and In Praise of Scribes: Manuscripts and their Makers in Seventeenth-Century England (OUP, 1998). He is also co-founder and co-editor of the near-annual series of volumes English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700 (1989- ), now published by the British Library.

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