Excavating Buried Treasure

It would doubtless have amazed fifteenth-century archivists had they known that five hundred years later another group of manuscript hunters were to be busily digging in libraries and archives looking for documents which would give information about themselves and their literary and artistic contemporaries. The deeds in which their petty lawsuits were recorded, the records of the deaths of their parents and the births of their children, the tax declarations in which they sought to comply with the law and evade it if possible, are the subject of this genial account. Mr. Mather describes the work of the Archivist—the tools he requires, the manuscripts he investigates, the difficulties he overcomes, the fascination of the discoveries which reward him. Rufus Mather is the author of Documents Relating to the Will of Luca Delia Robbia and other articles pertaining to Archive Research.