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?”: April 2018
The April crocodile mystery involves an original work of art, shown here in a detail. What’s going on with the odd-looking painting technique?
Imagining an 18th century Jane Doe
A fake woman with fake initials and a fake seal? What is going on with these early 18th century affidavits? Curator of Manuscripts Heather Wolfe explores burials, bureaucracy, and “ritualized compliance” in this post about two recent acquisitions.
The Strange and Practical Beauty of Small-Format Herbals
A guest post by Katarzyna Lecky The Folger Shakespeare Library has a wealth of pre-Linnaean English herbals (printed guides to the medicinal qualities of plants) ranging from gorgeous folios to pocket-sized reference manuals. Although the large-format botanical works boast an undeniable…
Of Counts and Causes: The Emergence of the London Bills of Mortality
A guest post by Dr. Kristin Heitman The Folger’s rare holdings let us glimpse aspects of Renaissance and early modern practices otherwise lost to us. For example, while many European cities and towns had well-documented methods for monitoring the health…
Cracks in Etched Plates
Originally, I was going to do a crocodile post about the binding of this architecture book by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau: Title page of Folger NA2625 .A63 1615 Cage Photo by Caroline Duroselle-Melish But after I thought about it, it…
“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: March 2018
This month’s Crocodile mystery is about an engraving. What do you think are the wavy lines on this print?
A New Acquisition: from the workshop of the Naval Binder?
But upon the table—oh joy! the tailor gave a shout—there, where he had left plain cuttings of silk—there lay the most beautifullest coat and embroidered satin waistcoat that ever were worn by a Mayor of Gloucester. There were roses and pansies…
Polyglot Poetics: Transnational Early Modern Literature
A guest post by Dr. Nigel Smith I am writing a transnational history of early modern European literature. Our inherited history of the different early modern vernacular languages and their literatures was fashioned through the lens of the 19th-century and…
Was early modern writing paper expensive?
Many of us have repeated the assertion that writing paper in early modern England was expensive and scarce, but it has always bothered me. After hearing this fairly regularly in response to two common questions —“Why did people write on…
Announcing a New Folger-NACBS Short-Term Fellowship
The Folger Institute and the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS) are delighted to announce a new fellowship for scholars of the British world who are working on topics from the early modern period through to the present day.…
The Shakespeare stamps
As several philatelically-astute readers quickly identified, the portrait of Shakespeare shown in last week’s Crocodile mystery is from a stamp! These one shilling stamps were issued annually for a number of years at the turn of the 20th…
“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: February 2018
This month’s crocodile mystery is an example of one of our favorite things: Shakespeare portraits! What kind of item is this portrait of Shakespeare from, and what is significant about the item?