Janet Backhouse

Janet Moira Backhouse (8 February 1938 – 3 November 2004) was an English manuscripts curator at the British Museum, and a leading authority in the field of illuminated manuscripts.

Janet Backhouse
Born8 February 1938
Corsham, Wiltshire
Died3 November 2004
Bath
NationalityEnglish
OccupationManuscripts curator

Early life and education

Janet Backhouse was born in Corsham, Wiltshire, the daughter of Joseph Holme Backhouse and Jessie Chivers Backhouse. Her father was a cattle-food salesman. Her brother David John Backhouse became a sculptor and author.[1]

Backhouse was educated at Stonar School and Bedford College, London.[1] At Bedford she worked with Lillian Penson and with paleographer Francis Wormald.[2]

Career

In 1962 Backhouse joined the British Museum's Manuscripts department as an Assistant Keeper of Western Manuscripts.[3][4] In that role, she catalogued the papers of horsewoman Lady Anne Blunt,[5] accompanied a manuscript of Tsar Ivan Alexander to Bulgaria in 1977, and escorted the Lindisfarne Gospels to be exhibited at Durham Cathedral in 1987, to mark the 1300th anniversary of the death of Cuthbert.[6] She also co-organised with Leslie Webster a 1991 exhibition of Anglo-Saxon artifacts and manuscripts, at the British Museum.[7]

Backhouse was a member of the Henry Bradshaw Society, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and served as an advisor to the National Art Collections Fund.[1] She was elected a member of the Comité Internationale de Paléographie Latine in 1993.[2] She edited the proceedings of the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium in 1998.[1] She retired from the British Library (as it had since become) as Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts in 1998.[8] By the end of her career "she had established an international reputation as one of the foremost scholars in her field".[9]

Backhouse died in 2004 from cancer, aged 66 years, in Bath.[1][2] She contributed to A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The Hours of Louis XII (2005), which was published after her death.[10] A festschrift, Illuminating the Book: Makers and Interpreters: Essays in Honour of Janet Backhouse, was published on the occasion of her retirement, edited by Michelle P. Brown and Scot McKendrick (1998).[3][5]

Select bibliography
  • The Illuminated Manuscript (1979)[11]
  • The Lindisfarne Gospels (1981) – on the Lindisfarne Gospels
  • Books of Hours (1985)[12]
  • The Becket Leaves (1988)[13]
  • The Luttrell Psalter (1989) – on the Luttrell Psalter
  • The Bedford Hours (1990)[14] – on the Bedford Hours
  • The Isabella Breviary (1993)[15] – on the Isabella Breviary
  • The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library (1997)[16]
  • The Hastings Hours (1997)[17]
  • The Sherborne Missal (1999)[18] – on the Sherborne Missal
  • Medieval Rural Life in the Luttrell Psalter (2000)[19]
  • Medieval Birds in the Sherborne Missal (2001)[20]
  • Illumination from Books of Hours (2004)[21]

References
  1. "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/94459. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Stratford, Jenny (2005). "Janet Backhouse (1938-2004)". Gazette du Livre Médiéval. 46 (1): 108–109.
  3. Pamela Porter and Shelley Jones, "Janet Backhouse: Colleague and Friend", in Michelle P. Brown and Scot McKendrick (eds), Illuminating the Book: Makers and Interpreters: Essays in Honour of Janet Backhouse (London: The British Library, 1998), p. 11.
  4. Smith, Mildred Ann (12 February 1982). "On the Bookshelf". Santa Cruz Sentinel. p. 53. Retrieved 1 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. De Hamel, Christopher (2005). "Janet Backhouse (1938-2004)". The Burlington Magazine. 147 (1229): 554. ISSN 0007-6287. JSTOR 20074079.
  6. West, E. Hamilton (11 June 1987). "Janet Backhouse". The Guardian. p. 3. Retrieved 1 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. Bailey, Martin (3 November 1991). "The End of the 'Dark Ages' Myth". The Observer. p. 28. Retrieved 1 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. Heathcote, Graham (25 March 1993). "Title Doesn't Fit Reproduction of Lavish Medieval Book". Muncie Evening Press. p. 15. Retrieved 1 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. Obituary in The Times, 29 December 2004. Accessed 3 August 2010.
  10. Evans, Mark; Backhouse, Janet; Kren, Thomas; Turner, Nancy (2005). A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The Hours of Louis XII. Getty Publications. ISBN 978-0-89236-829-7.
  11. Backhouse, Janet (1979). The illuminated manuscript. Phaidon.
  12. Backhouse, Janet (1985). Books of Hours. British Library. ISBN 978-0-7123-0052-0.
  13. Backhouse, Janet; Hamel, Christopher De (1988). The Becket Leaves. British Library. ISBN 978-0-7123-0141-1.
  14. Backhouse, Janet (1990). The Bedford Hours. British Libr. ISBN 978-0-7123-0231-9.
  15. Backhouse, Janet; Master of James IV of Scotland, fl.; Master of the Dresden Hours, fl.; David, approximately Gérard; British Library, issuing body. (1993). The Isabella breviary. London : The British Library. ISBN 978-0-7123-0269-2.
  16. Backhouse, Janet (1997). The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting in the British Library. British Library. ISBN 978-0-7123-4542-2.
  17. Backhouse, Janet (1997). The Hastings Hours. Pomegranate. ISBN 978-0-7649-0002-0.
  18. Backhouse, Janet (1 January 1999). The Sherborne Missal. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-4743-4.
  19. Backhouse, Janet; Sarkonak, Ralph William; Staff, British Library (1 January 2000). Medieval Rural Life in the Luttrell Psalter. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-8399-9.
  20. Backhouse, Janet; Library, British (1 January 2001). Medieval Birds in the Sherborne Missal. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-8434-7.
  21. Backhouse, Janet; Library, British (2004). Illumination from Books of Hours. British Library. ISBN 978-0-7123-4849-2.
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