The Collation

Psssst…. we’re working on a new online catalog for the Folger collection. Do you want to help out by having an early look? If so, please keep reading! The link is deliberately buried deep in this blog post because there’s…

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Crocodile Mystery for May. This month, take a moment to examine this image from a 19th century printed text of Macbeth published as a promptbook for performance. What is odd about the disposition…

a guest post by Daniel Davies I defended my Ph.D. dissertation on April 3, 2020. The defense happened on Zoom, which has become standard academic operating procedure by now but at the time felt like an extreme oddity. ‘Zoom is…

a guest post by Stephen Grant Fig. 1. Folger Shakespeare Library from Northwest 1940Author’s Collection, photo by Stephen Grant Printed on picture side: FOLGER SHAKESPEARIAN LIBRARY, WASHINGTON, D. C. Printed on address side: THE UNION NEWS COMPANY FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY.…

When I began working on the March 1 Collation post about watchpapers, I saw right away I’d need to make a correction to the catalog record for Mr. Quin in the character of Sr. John Falstaff. Hamnet gave the publisher’s address…

During September of last year, while browsing digital resources in the London Metropolitan Archives, a familiar name caught my eye. It was a 1652 indictment from the Middlesex quarter sessions, which tried criminal cases, where a woman named Joan Peterson…

We’re back with yet another paleography puzzle for April’s crocodile: comment with your best guess about the below two items from this early modern list of accounts or charges, and as a bonus, tell us what they might have to…

At the Folger, we are proud to sponsor research inquiry within a vibrant and intellectually generous community. Periodically, as that research is published, we circle back to talk with recent authors to showcase the role of collections-based inquiry on their…

In her 1616 mother’s advice book, The Mothers Blessing, Puritan author Dorothy Leigh exhorts her readers: “Teach a childe in his youth the trade of his life, and he will not forget it, not depart from it when he is…

a guest post by Missy Dunaway Greetings! I was the Folger Shakespeare Library’s artist-in-residence in November of 2021. I dedicated my Folger Institute Fellowship to a painting project entitled Birds of the Bard. This growing collection of paintings will catalog…

Thanks for the great guesses about the March 2022 Crocodile Mystery! All were different, all were plausible, and all were incorrect. It would have been easier if I’d included other examples of the same type of print,  because they’re always…

As you’re waiting for the interminable month of February to finally expire, distract yourself with the following thought: Prints like this one were useful as well as decorative. What use did they serve? Leave your thoughts and guesses in the…