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The Collation

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

Correcting with cancel slips
Collation

Correcting with cancel slips

Posted
Author
Sarah Werner

correcting 4 lines (STC 25286; sig. 1r)Thanks to my last post, when Mitch Fraas and I were looking at how different copies of the same book handled having a printer error (Judas instead of Jesus, in that case), I’ve spent the…

Folger files; or, a fetch-quest come to life
Collation

Folger files; or, a fetch-quest come to life

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Author
Abbie Weinberg

“MS. corrections to the text, by the author (Folger files).” Such an innocuous note in the Folger copy note field of the record for our second copy of Philip Massinger’s The Bond-man (STC 17632). Meaghan Brown, the Folger’s CLIR Fellow,…

Keeping your Jesus and Judas straight
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Keeping your Jesus and Judas straight

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Author
Mitch Fraas Sarah Werner

Co-written by Sarah Werner and Mitch Fraas One might think that when printing the New Testament, one would want to avoid at all costs mixing up Jesus and Judas. However, this month’s crocodile shows that such mistakes did happen: the typo…

"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?" April 2015
Collation

"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?" April 2015

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Author
The Collation

Our crocodile series was disrupted by the work that went into creating the Folger’s new website, but we’re back in action this month with a perhaps appropriately timed mystery item: what manner of thing is this? It’s just a snippet…

Q & A: Caroline Duroselle-Melish, Curator of Early Modern Books and Prints
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Q & A: Caroline Duroselle-Melish, Curator of Early Modern Books and Prints

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Author
The Collation

In January, Caroline Duroselle-Melish joined the Folger as the new Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Early Modern Books and Prints, a position that gives her responsibility over books and prints through 1800. She has worked with a wide range of collections…

Taming a tight binding
Collation

Taming a tight binding

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Author
Erin Blake

You know how some old bindings gently let a book stay open on its own, at a comfortable angle? And how other old bindings seem to willfully resist, taunting you by starting to close just as you get the book weights perfectly arranged? This post introduces a simple tool that…

"I see it feelingly": a raised-type King Lear
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"I see it feelingly": a raised-type King Lear

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Author
Sarah Hovde

For many of the books in our collection, an unassuming cover can turn out to protect a fascinating text block. What makes this one unusual is the discovery, upon opening the cover, that this book is meant to be read not with the…

Pi(e) day, represented
Pi given as a ratio
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Pi(e) day, represented

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Author
Abbie Weinberg

March 14th is Pi(e) Day, and this year we get an extra two digits (this year’s date being, in the American style, 3/14/15, taking us through the first 5 digits of pi). While many people (including our culinarily-inclined staff here…

Early modern eyebrow interpretation, or what it means to have a unibrow
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Early modern eyebrow interpretation, or what it means to have a unibrow

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Author
Heather Wolfe

While showing the Researching the Archive seminar some examples of manuscript receipt books a couple of weeks ago (randomly selected after doing a quick “form/genre” in Hamnet on the genre terms “Medical formularies” and “Cookbooks”), I was tickled to come across a section…

"This Play I Red" and other marginal notes on reading
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"This Play I Red" and other marginal notes on reading

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Author
Claire M. L. Bourne

A guest post by Claire M. L. Bourne As a long-term fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library this year, I have been surveying all the English playbooks in the collection—from 1500 to 1709—in order to understand changing conventions of dramatic…

EMMO: advancing and expanding
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EMMO: advancing and expanding

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Author
Paul Dingman

During the last few months, the Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) project has been gathering strength and reaching farther both inside the Folger Shakespeare Library and outside to individuals and organizations. These actions have translated into the passing of several…

Knowing your Adams from your Adams: decoding library catalog citations
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Knowing your Adams from your Adams: decoding library catalog citations

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Author
Erin Blake

Picture, if you will, a 16th-century Continental edition of Ovid, an 18th-century illustrated history of London, and a 19th-century book about the American west. Now picture which one of the three might be “in Adams.” Which one did you pick? Years ago,…

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