The Collation

This Thursday is Acquisitions Night, the annual benefit to support Folger collections. It’s something of a three-ring circus: buffet dinner in the Great Hall, conservation demonstrations at one end of the Paster Reading Room, and—in the center ring—dozens of newly-acquired…

In my last post, I wrote about my joy in finding printer’s errors and what we might learn from them about early modern printing. In this one, I want to look at some examples of what printers do to correct…

In an era when many schools don’t even teach cursive handwriting anymore because everyone taps out their messages on screens, it may seem quaint to focus on a woman known for her handwriting. But that’s exactly why we’re attracted to Esther Inglis.

One of my favorite categories of early modern books are those that show errors, small mistakes made in the process of printing them. a leaf that was folded when it was printed I don’t love them because I like to…

title page of The Mariners Mirrour Anyone who has been a Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library can attest to the central role that Carol Brobeck plays as the Fellowships Administrator in making their work possible. She has also worked…

Hello and welcome to another installment in a series of tooltips on the quiet, yet oh-so-ubiquitous universal resource locator (aka URL). As pointed out in Hamnet URLs, part one: because “live” URLS in the Hamnet database are session-based, they can’t…

When a reader needs  to verify the printmaking technique behind an early modern book illustration, I’m always happy to grab my favorite 10x loupe and head up to the Reading Room to have a closer look. By popular request, here…

“I beegan, to ourloke this Booke . . . .”  These words are written by Lady Anne Clifford on the title page of her copy of John Selden’s Titles of Honor (1631), which is featured in the first case of…

Last week I wrote about two students who worked on (two different copies of) the same book. But looking over the 64 texts that the 66 students I’ve taught over the last five years (in eight different seminars), I’m struck…

Heather: The other day I received an email from the Conservation Lab with the subject line: “Annotation found on the verso of a lined frontispiece,” and a link to a couple of images, one taken under ultraviolet light. The conservators…

As I’ve written about before, in my Undergraduate Seminars students devote the bulk of their research time to crafting a biography of the book they’ve chosen as their primary focus. They find out who wrote the book and who printed…

With this post we inaugurate a series by people working at the Folger as Interns. Classroom work and professional training never quite capture the true nature of the j – o – b. Therefore, for those pursuing advanced degrees in…