Te corpus of manuscript leaves in the United States and in Canada presents problems and opportunities distinct from those faced by and ofered to other national collections, due to both the content of the corpus and the historical circumstances of its development. European fragment collections, formed for the most part in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are primarily comprised of collections of ex situ binding fragments or albums of illuminated cuttings. Beginning in the early twentieth century, dealers began breaking books apart and selling them of page by page, driven by the knowledge that their profts would be signifcantly greater if they sold 250 leaves to 250 buyers than one codex to one buyer. 1 North America was a primary benefciary of this fooded market: from Masters of Industry to small-town collectors and from major museums to small colleges, bibliophiles were clamouring for matted and framed leaves. Leaves from Gothic Books of Hours and Italian choirbooks were particularly prized, and today there are tens of thousands of single leaves in several hundred North © Florilegium Florilegium, vol. 33 (2016): 143-166. DOI: 10.3138/flor.33.007 The Beauvais Missal: Otto Ege’s Scattered Leaves and Digital Surrogacy * Lisa Fagin Davis * Many scholars, librarians, curators, collectors, and bookdealers have contributed to this project, and I thank them all for their generosity in sharing information and images with me. In particular, I would like to thank Debra Cashion and Bryan Haberberger of the Broken Books Project at St. Louis University, Dot Porter of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Jefrey Hamburger, Christopher de Hamel, A. S. G. Edwards, Scott Gwara, Claire Jenson, Peter Kidd, James Marrow, Barbara Shailor, William Stoneman, and Roger Wieck for their generosity and insight. I would also like to thank the anonymous pre-publication reviewers of this article for their valuable feedback. 1 de Hamel, “Cutting up Manuscripts,” 15-18. ${protocol}://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/flor.33.007 - Lisa Davis <lfd@themedievalacademy.org> - Wednesday, September 04, 2019 1:14:34 PM - IP Address:82.142.89.42