The Sandars Readership in Bibliography was instituted in 1895 with a bequest of £2000 left to the University by Mr Samuel Sandars of Trinity College (1837-1894), and continues today in the annual series of Sandars Lectures. Read more about the duties of the Reader here.

Sandars Lectures 2026

Flax to Folio: The Global Diffusion of Early Paper and the History of Textiles 

Paper is the most consequential writing material in human history, yet there is still much to reveal about its spread thanks to recent discoveries. This two-part series traces the thread of papermaking technology from ancient China to Europe, then inverts the perspective, starting in the flax fields of Egypt and ending at the writing desks of merchants, scholars, notaries, and officials across the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean.

Together, the lectures argue that the history of texts and textiles are inseparable. Most premodern books and documents were crafted from recycled clothing with Egypt providing a particularly well-documented example of how a textile boom created a media revolution.  

Lectures will be held in-person at Robinson College, live-streamed and recorded.

Lecture 1: The Path of Paper: New Evidence for the History of an Old Technology
Tuesday 17 November 2026, 5-6pm

The history of paper is usually told as a story of diffusion from east to west, from ancient China to the medieval Islamic world and Europe. But much of the evidence is still up for grabs, with recent archaeological and archival discoveries complicating received narratives. This lecture draws on manuscript evidence to revisit key moments in paper’s long migration. Highlights include the Sogdian (not Chinese) origins of Arab papermaking; an eleventh-century North African treatise long dismissed as literary convention; and documents from the Michaelides and Cairo Genizah collections in Cambridge that are the earliest known dated, physical evidence of paper use in Egypt and the Iberian peninsula. 

The talk will be followed by a drinks reception at Cambridge University Library.

Lecture 2: Tax and Flax: Textile Manufacturing in Medieval Egypt
Wednesday 18 November 2026, 5-6pm

Papyrus was the main portable writing material in Egypt for four thousand years, yet over just four decades, paper made papyrus obsolete in Egypt and endangered in Italy. Medieval Mediterranean paper was made from recycled rags. But where did all those textiles come from? This lecture follows a trail of newly deciphered fiscal documents to shed light on textile manufacturing in medieval Egypt’s countryside and trade letters discussing cloth exports to Sicily and Oman. Raw flax, linen textiles, and, eventually, paper made it across the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, turning paper into one of the main materials on which merchants, officials, and scholars wrote the very texts that provide precious clues to what became a medieval writing revolution.