The Collation

This post is brought to you by John Ward, who observed in the 1660s that a good way to “avoid drinking too much Beer” is to “suck itt in with a quill.” John Ward’s sage advice, given him by Dr.…

For this month’s Crocodile Mystery, we ask you, our wonderful readers: What is this thing, and what is it made of? As always, comment with your thoughts and guesses and we’ll be back next week with more information!

A guest post by Elisabeth Chaghafi Large collections of books or manuscripts may be interesting for two reasons: the actual content of the items they contain, and also what they reveal about the collector who compiled them. The Folger’s Newdigate…

As of September 2019, researchers have 35,261 more reasons to use the Union First Line Index of English Verse, hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library. The database now contains all first lines, not just manuscript first lines, from Elizabethan poetry:…

A guest post by Stephen Grant It would be more than a stretch to claim that Henry and Emily Folger were deltiologists, that is, as Collins Dictionary reminds us, persons who collect and study picture postcards. However, postcards played a…

A guest post by April Fuller and Laurel Bassett In her early eighteenth-century recipe, “A Drink for the Gout,” Mary Kettilby’s list of ingredients contain both homegrown roots and objects of empire “pressed into service” for the recovery of the…

The Folger Institute is pleased to announce our 2019-2020 cohort of Fellows. This year we will welcome forty-four Fellows to the Folger, including five long-term scholars: Clarissa Chenovick, John Kuhn, Kathleen Long, Anna More, and Seth Stewart Williams. In anticipation…

Many thanks for your guesses. Folger Shakespeare Library, 218- 045q (photo by Caroline Duroselle-Melish) What you see in this picture is the verso of a title page leaf. The stamp at the top of the picture is indeed the one…

We’re back! For this month’s Crocodile Mystery, we ask a classic question: what’s going on with this image? What is the purpose or function of the image shown? As always, leave your thoughts in the comments below, and we’ll be…

It seems appropriate to finish up our summer retrospective series with one of the earliest (and perennially most popular) posts. Whether it’s a back-to-basics refresher for you or an answer to the question you’ve been asking yourself, Deciphering Signature Marks…

It seems fitting that with last week’s retrospective post being all about paper, this week we should turn to the age-old question: just what do you call it when a book still has pages joined together (aside from “difficult to…

A guest post by Ruma Chopra It took the English doctor Thomas Short eighteen years to publish his nearly 1000-page assessment of the relationship between climates and diseases. Published in 1749, his two-volume history, A general chronological history of the…