Kathleen Lynch
Folger copy 54: From family library to research library
Folger First Folio number 54 traveled over 10,000 miles from Washington D.C., to San Diego California and Honolulu, Hawaii, during our First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare tour, and is on view in our Great Hall through January…
Folger copy 54: The First Folio as family scrapbook
One the First Folio’s owners, Captain Charles Hutchinson, clearly valued the book as a reflection on his family’s place in English history. Not only did he restore it, but he also treated it as a scrapbook of sorts, working in details and documents related to his family history.
What to do about the Macro manuscripts?
We thought we had the right question. Renate Mesmer (Head of Conservation), Heather Wolfe (Curator of Manuscripts), and I invited several scholars to the Folger for a lab-based discussion on “V.a.354: What to do about the Macro Manuscripts?” Specifically, the…
Ohel or Dod? Ideal copies and messy print
When is a repair to a title page more like a clue to a bibliographical puzzle? detail of an altered title page This question has intrigued me since, some years ago, I first consulted a Folger copy of John Rogers’s…
Peeking behind the locked door
Another sede vacante has come and gone. With the wall-to-wall coverage of contemporary media, this one made witnesses of us all. Or at least, the coverage let us witness the events outside the conclave and to share our speculation about…
Pew-hopping in St. Margaret's Church
Manuscripts of unusual shapes and sizes are always fun to investigate, and we recently had the opportunity to reevaluate a particularly large and interesting one, a ca. 1600 “pew plan” written on a piece of parchment (Folger MS X.d.395), in…
Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November
Last week, while flipping through a magazine (sorry, I don’t recall which one, but you probably all read the same stuff I do), my attention was caught by a photo of two people wearing what I immediately recognized as Guy…