The Collation
Research and Exploration at the Folger
The Collation is a gathering of useful information and observations from Folger staff and researchers. Read more about this blog
“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: September 2020
Welcome back for another Crocodile post! As you face the new challenges Fall brings to us, take a few moments to breathe out, and take a look at this month’s mystery. What’s going on in this image? Where is it…
Introduction to a Slightly Modified Theme: Postcards in the (home) archive
A guest post by Stephen Grant The thematic series I started Aug. 12, 2019, “Postcards in the Folger Archives,” has come to a pause. It has not escaped my dear collational readers’ attention that in my most recent post I…
The “Quartermaster’s Map” of England and Wales
Thanks for the excellent guesses on the identity of the August Crocodile Mystery! If you’ll permit me to indulge myself, I’ll prolong the suspense a little longer by showing some examples of what it might have been, but isn’t (and…
“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: August, 2020
Some types of publication have fairly standard proportions. For example, you can be pretty sure this oblong volume isn’t a Bible or a play text: Front cover of The pen’s excellencie, or, The secretaries delighte / Written by Martin Billingsley.…
2020-2021 Folger Research Fellows
The Folger Institute is pleased to announce our 2020-2021 cohort of Folger Institute Research Fellows. From the outset, we knew this year would be different. The Folger Institute marks its fiftieth anniversary this year, and the Folger Shakespeare Library is…
Emily Jordan Folger and Joseph Quincy Adams
A guest post by Stephen Grant “The Hall was demolished in 1928,” Joan Harrison writes in Glen Cove, Images of America (2008), “for the building of Morgan Park,” named after financier J. P. Morgan. Emily Folger would have known when…
Getting Dressed with the Hermaphrodites
A guest post by Kathleen Long (Editor’s Note: You can read Kathleen’s previous post, Dining with the Hermaphrodites, for a discussion of another aspect the novel.) The inhabitants of the island depicted in the 1605 French novel, The Island of…
Heraldic Colors
Yes, indeed. The letters in this month’s mystery image are B, O, and G, and they represent what is missing from the image: color! The mystery image is a detail of a coat of arms in Folger MS V.b.256, which…
“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: July 2020
Welcome back for another Crocodile Mystery! As you enjoy this first week of July (really? really? Who said the calendar could do that?), spare some thoughts for this mystery image. What’s going on in this image? What are those letters…
Announcing the Earle Hyman Collection
Earle Hyman as the Prince of Morocco in a 1953 production of Merchant of Venice Earlier this year, the Folger Shakespeare Library was privileged to receive the Earle Hyman Collection, including many of the actor’s personal papers, photographs, and theatrical…
Postcards in the Folger Archives: British Sea Captain John Robinson and Henry Folger
A guest post by Stephen Grant Rosy-cheeked and white-bearded poet, painter, and shipmaster John Robinson of Watford, Hertfordshire was a commanding presence on the bridge of the steamship Minnehaha from 1900 until he retired from the American-owned Atlantic Transport Line…
Words with pictures, or, What's in a name?
One of the points I like to make when I teach the History of Printed Book Illustration at Rare Book School is that images and words affect each other. The course deliberately focuses on illustrations—that is, on pictures and text…