Sizing Shakespeare's Sonnets
A guest post by Faith Acker I still remember the first rare book I handled in a library. It was Thomas Caldecott’s copy of the Shake-speares Sonnets. Neuer before imprinted (Thomas Thorpe, 1609) a beautiful quarto that Caldecott presented to…
The Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Verse Miscellany
A guest post by Betty Schellenberg Recently I’ve been exploring the very active literary lives of eighteenth-century lower gentry and middle-class individuals. Many of these socially obscure people not only composed and exchanged verse in manuscript form within their own…
A Dictionary for Don Quixote
A guest post by Kathryn Vomero Santos For scholars interested in the history of translation and language learning in early modern England, signs of use in books designed to teach their users how to read, speak, or write in another…
Learning to Weep: Early Modern Readers Reading Saint Peters Complaint (1595)
A guest post by Clarissa Chenovick Devotional weeping was serious business in early modern England. In an impressive array of bestselling print sermons and spiritual treatises, preachers and writers of varied religious persuasions exhort their hearers and readers to weep,…
2019-2020 Folger Fellows
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…
Launching Global Environmental History: Dr. Thomas Short on Air and Diseases in 1749
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…
All the world and half a dozen lemons
A guest post by Lauren Working Letter from Thomas Wood to Richard Bagot, 10 October 1576, Folger MS L.a.987 (click for zoomable version) Thomas Wood’s 1576 letter to Richard Bagot begins conventionally enough. Wood was sending some artichoke “slips” with…
A Wild and Woolley Week
A guest post by the Before ‘Farm to Table’ team This week the Before ‘Farm to Table’: Early Modern Foodways and Cultures team turned their collective attention to Hannah Woolley (or Wolley), a British woman writer who was among the…
“Run away”: a life in 78 words
A guest post by Simon Newman His name was Quoshey , an Akan day name that tells us he was quite likely born on a Sunday on the Gold Coast of West Africa. But on Christmas Day 1700 Quashey was…
One page, four inscriptions, three households
A guest post by Rebecca Laroche I began transcribing Folger manuscript V.a.681 because I recognized from the dealer’s description the name of a family, the Shirleys, and its house, Staunton Harold; I had previously found another book owned by another…
Accounting for Relationships: the Drury Lane Financial Records
A guest post by Chelsea Phillips With the cherry trees blooming (almost), the sun shining (sometimes), and tax season looming, there is no more delightful time to consider the vagaries of 18th-century theatrical accounting practice. The Folger Shakespeare Library holds…
The Mapper and the Rambler
A guest post by Isaac Stephens Are you a person who makes sure to have all your proverbial ducks in a row, everything meticulously planned out before you engage in a project, make your goals a reality, or depart on…