Bookish Maledictions: An Interview with Dr Eleanor Baker

“I had previously stumbled across book curses when leafing through manuscripts and, as an avid fan of folk horror literature, was interested in the intersection of the macabre and book history.”

-Dr Eleanor Baker

Modern libraries do not suffer fools gladly. To protect their collections from ambitious thieves, they frequently rely on a multipronged strategy, which ranges from sending “friendly reminders” to passing the matter to the police. All very straightforward: earthly consequences for earthly offences.

The pre-modern world was another story. Thieves had to deal with much more than a telling-off or a hefty fine. Some books were inscribed with maledictions, curses that laid out–often in excruciating detail–how justice would be meted out to unscrupulous borrowers. According to Dr Eleanor Baker, author of the forthcoming book Bookish Maledictions, medieval curses often involved “excommunication, hanging, hell fire, and drowning”. Thieves were essentially warned that they would pay for their crimes–not in gold–but in blood. These curses, Baker told explained, could “appear in a variety of settings, from twelfth-century wills to seventeenth-century recipe books, and late medieval commonplace books to nineteenth-century school textbooks”.

The Thinker’s Garden caught up with Baker to learn more about both her book and her current research.

The Custodian: Could you tell us more about your background in medieval studies?

Dr Eleanor Baker: I had not studied medieval literature before going to university, and the only interaction I had had with anything medieval-themed was a computer game called Stronghold in which you could build a medieval village (complete with named chickens and outbreaks of disease). I studied for my undergraduate degree in English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, where there was a compulsory first-year unit on Old and Middle English Literature. I was very intimidated by the unfamiliar language but was won over in the first lecture which stressed the connection between material and literary culture. I was also lucky enough to be taught by three of the best medievalists in the business: Dr Jenny Neville, Dr Catherine Nall, and Dr Alastair Bennett. I wrote my dissertation on the hagiographies of the three female saints included in the Katherine Group and focused on the relationship between the materiality of the page and the torture made to the saints’ skin. It was not a very imaginative dissertation, but it introduced me to the work of scholars of material textuality (Sarah Kay, Kathy Cawsey, Laura Saetviet Miles) whose writing would leave an indelible mark–textual materiality joke, there–on my thinking.

I went on to do an MPhil in Medieval Literature at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge. As part of the course, we had to complete a unit on codicology and palaeography, which was taught by Dr Stewart Brookes. For our second session he had arranged a manuscript viewing at the Cambridge University Library. About fifteen manuscripts were laid out like a very expensive codicological tasting menu, and for many of us it was the first time we had seen medieval texts in the flesh. Dr Brookes had (very thoughtfully) pulled up some manuscripts containing the poems I was going to work on for my dissertation: The Long and Short Charters of Christ. These poems described Christ’s sacrifice through an extended metaphor that figured his body as a charter, and some of the witnesses imitated aspects of the legal documents with drawings of seals and Latin legal headings.

At this point, I was sold on the idea that the most arresting pieces of late medieval literature created, in Professor Laura Ashe’s words, “a near perfect circle of meaning,” with the material text directly reflecting the content of the poem (for example, a text describing a charter visually appearing as a charter on the page). I moved over to St John’s College, University of Oxford for my AHRC-funded DPhil, which was supervised by the intimidatingly clever but thankfully kind Professor Daniel Wakelin. Here, I entirely reversed the thinking that had motivated my MPhil dissertation: the richest texts, I argued, were not those which directly mirrored their containers, but which offered an insight into the perception of different kinds of material texts at once (codices, but also inscriptions in stone and wood, legal documents, and immaterial books like the Book of Life). I looked at a range of writings–craft recipes, sermons, lyrics, The Book of Margery Kempe–and considered what their descriptions of material texts could tell us about how books were understood as holy objects, as self-fashioning accessories, as a means of understanding the human mind, and of comprehending ideas of transience and permanence.

My general interest has therefore always revolved around what books as material objects mean to people, and how they impact people’s behaviour. I have written on book metaphors in late medieval sermons here, on teaching practices here and here, and a chapter on Middle English book-craft recipes is included in an upcoming volume on recipe texts edited by Dr Carrie Griffin and Dr Hannah Ryley. This was all punctuated with a healthy dose of messing about running medieval church crawls, pilgrimage days, medieval mystery cycle performances, and of course teaching fabulous students. I owe much to the many fantastic medievalists who I crossed paths with during this time.

C: When and why did you first decide to write an anthology on book curses?

EB: For the sake of full transparency for any graduates wondering how these opportunities come about: I was approached by Bodleian Publishing on the recommendation of my ex-supervisor and jumped at the chance with embarrassing exuberance. I had previously stumbled across book curses when leafing through manuscripts and, as an avid fan of folk horror literature, was interested in the intersection of the macabre and book history. M. R. James eat your heart out.

In the process of writing up my proposal I noted that scholarship on book curses tended to remain strictly within period boundaries, rather than offering a comparative approach, and that many examples were drawn from nineteenth-century Notes & Queries articles with dubious citations. I wanted to bring together some of the most striking book curses of their kind, and to offer some insight into the books that these curses appear in so that readers could follow their own interests, and that any book-historians could navigate to their sources if need be. I also wanted it to be a book which acknowledged the work of librarians, archivists, digitising specialists, and cataloguers, who often know the books in their collections intimately and whose tireless work makes books like this possible. I have been sure to consult with these experts, and greatly appreciate their insight and generosity (to not do so would surely be anathema).

C: Structurally and visually, what did these curses tend to look like? Was there an unofficial “style guide” or basic format to which curse-writers referred?

EB: In short: yes, majority of the curses are formulaic. These formulas, however, vary between the identity of the curse-inscriber, the purpose of the curse, and the period and language that the curse is written in. Many of the curses conform to a rhyme scheme and this restricts the scope of adaptation, but there is creativity in this, too (indeed, some of the most humorous examples are those which completely disregard a well-worn scheme to squeeze in an extra-detailed torture or specific victim’s name).

There are common themes within period groupings. Medieval curses are often concerned with excommunication, hanging, hell fire, and drowning, while eighteenth and nineteenth century examples often threaten shame and the gallows, specifically. There is also a definite transition between the age of the curse-writers as the centuries unfold. Those of the medieval and early modern periods tend to be adult, whilst the closer we get to the twentieth century, the more likely the curse has been penned by children or adolescents. Child-cursers are bloodthirsty and should not be underestimated.

In terms of their location, this really varies. Many are written on flyleaves, end leaves, or pastedowns, but some are written in the margins or occasional blank page in the main body of the book. They often appear alongside pen trials and other scribblings but are also found neatly penned after the final lines of a text or printed as book plates. I find the relationship between the book curse and the book that it features in as interesting as the gory threats themselves. These curses appear in a variety of settings, from twelfth-century wills to seventeenth-century recipe books, and late medieval commonplace books to nineteenth-century school textbooks.

C: What are some of the strangest maledictions you’ve come across?

EB: My (current) favourite curse was inscribed by one William Hok in a fifteenth-century Book of Hours held in the British Library (London, British Library, Harley MS 1845, f. 8v). The Middle English curse threatens that the book thief will have their skin rotted off by the devil:

William Hok owns this book,
And he that steals this book:
May the devil rot off his skin.

Wyllyam Hok oth thys bok
and he that thys bok stels
the dele rot off hys uels

It is not unusual for book curses of this period to invoke the devil, but this example feels particularly visceral. It also doesn’t specify that the thief should be dead before their skin starts rotting, leaving the unpleasant possibility that their skin should slough off while the are still living.

C: When is the expected release date for Bookish Maledictions? Do you have plans to give any lectures beforehand?

EB: Bookish Medications will curse the shelves some time in 2024. I do not currently have any talks booked but would be delighted to do so and welcome any promising leads! I have made it a side-project to produce some linocuts inspired by the curses, which I often post on Twitter @EleanorMayBaker.