J. J. G. Alexander

Jonathan James Graham Alexander, FBA (born August 1935), known in print as J. J. G. Alexander, is a medievalist and expert on manuscripts, "one of the most profound and wide-ranging of all historians of illuminated manuscripts". Education and career Jonathan Alexander matriculated at the University of Oxford in the 1960s (BA, MA, D.Phil.) before becoming a Lecturer and Reader in History of Art at the University of Birmingham from 1971 to 1987. Alexander edited the Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles from 1975 onwards and wrote the first volume of the six volume series, Insular Manuscripts, 6th to the 9th century, just one of the many books and articles he has written on manuscripts. The outcome of the survey he undertook with Elzbieta Temple of the illuminated manuscripts held in the collections of the University of Oxford colleges resulted in the co-authored book Illuminated Manuscripts in the Oxford College Libraries, the University Archives and the Taylor Institution which was published in 1985. This work is said to be the inspiration for the more recent cataloguing of the manuscripts in the University of Cambridge collection with which J.J.G. Alexander was also involved. In 1987 Alexander worked on the exhibition Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England, 1200-1400 at the Royal Academy of Arts and co-edited the catalogue with Paul Binski (see below).