This is the very first 'teach yourself' book on palaeography, covering all the skills that the genealogist needs to read any document that might be found at any date in English archives.

Using a series of graded exercises in transcription, Teach Yourself Palaeography works backwards in time in easy stages from the modern handwriting of the nineteenth century to the court hands of the medieval period, focusing on records that are of particular interest to family and local historians.

The book provides a unique, self-contained reference guide to palaeography, and to all the different letter forms, symbols and abbreviations that have ever been used in English records.

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“This educational guide will help you master the reading of old handwriting from the 19th Century back to the court hands of the 16th. It covers the terminology used when transcribing, but the main emphasis is on practical learning in order to decipher old documents, on the importance of ‘having a go’ and persisting."