I am new in the forum, and certainly very far away from the skills of most members, but I do try to improve. A large part of my attempts comes from online information, of which there is a wealth available.
For this reason I am opening this thread: to share in successive messages links to most of the books I have found in the hope others may find them as useful as I do.
I'll start with books in English, but
beware: as a Spaniard, many of the books I use deal with the Spanish hand(s) and its history and are written in Spanish. I do also use books in Italian, French or other languages. However, the writing samples are in most cases self-explanatory and can be followed without difficulty.
I think it would be nice if others did also share their links to publicly available calligraphy books here.
'Nuff said! Time to get started.
1510 - Scribal Pattern BookYou can get this from Yale's Beinecke Library.
https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3593605. Click on "Export as PDF" and select "Entire set" to get the full contents as a single PDF file. Or use the direct link
https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/pdfgen/exportPDF.php?bibid=10450154&solrid=3593605.
I think it is better to know how to get it and where from, since this will also enable you to explore other available treasures at this site.
I quote from the book page:
Description: Most passages of text in the first part begin with large decorative initials, primarily white floral designs on black grounds. Initial (green and red added) with full penwork border of swirling leaves on f. 1r; initial in colors and containing arms on f. 4r.
Abstract:Manuscript on parchment of Gregorius Bock, Scribal Pattern Book. This model book for scribes is composed of two parts. The first illustrates alphabets in various scripts; the alphabet is often preceded by a text written in that style. The second part of the codex is composed of decorative initials arranged alphabetically.
A wonderful book to see alphabets and examples of several ancient scripts.
Examples of the chancery hand, engravedThe Getty institute and the Hathi project bring us this nice book on Chancery italic. The web page is at
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100240768 and the full book can be obtained by clicking on... "Full view" at the bottom. There you can download a single page or the full book as PDF (the direct link would be
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/imgsrv/download/pdf?id=gri.ark%3A%2F13960%2Ft2n618p0z;orient=0;size=100.
If you visit the page instead of downloading directly, you can see the hierarchy it belongs to and explore the library.
By the way, it was digitized by the Internet Archive, so it can be found there as well
https://archive.org/details/examplesofchance00leon.
1618 - Billingsley. The pen's excellencieYou will need Java to browse it at Cambridge University
https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/billingsley/ if you check the Zoompan edition to browse it in high quality, but not if you access the simple version in straight JPEG images. The JPEG images have the advantage of being easily downloadable, which allows you to later bind them into a single PDF book.
1856 - Handbook of mediaeval alphabets and devicesYou can find this book at Amazon, but also in the Internet Archive in various "versions" (digitizations). It contains mostly embellished capitals, which is a wonderful resource in many occasions. Some of the links are
https://archive.org/details/handbookofmediev00shaw/https://archive.org/details/handbookofmedia00shawuoft/https://archive.org/details/handbookofmediae00shawrich/https://archive.org/details/handbookofmediae00shaw/https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_sXoNAAAAQAAJ/ (this one is in B&W)
https://archive.org/details/handbookmediaev01shawgoog/ (this one too)
Alphabets, numerals & devices of the Middle AgesAlso by Shaw and also available at the Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/alphabetsnumeral00shaw/Well, I'll leave it here and continue on another opportunity. But I am sure you also have your preferred links to free books, so why not share them?