The Newsy Baronet: how Richard Newdigate (per)used his newsletters
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…
Got Gout? Eighteenth-Century Global "Remedies" in Mary Kettilby’s Receipt Book
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…
Book Stamps
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…
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…
Summer Retrospective: Woodcut, engraving, or what?
If you’ve ever been confused by the differences between woodcuts, engravings, and etchings, clearly you’re not alone! This post by Erin Blake, from 2012, is perennially one of our most popular. So in case you missed it the first time…
"What's in a Name?" or, Going Sideways
When, in Act 2 of William Shakespeare’s famous teen suicide play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet muses “hat’s in a name? That which we call a rose / y any other word would smell as sweet,”Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston,…
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…
Portrait of a Young African Woman
A guest post by Alicia Meyer The Folger Shakespeare Library houses three etchings of African diasporic people by Wenceslaus Hollar. While we may never know the identities of the figures in these images, Hollar’s artistic choices direct how we see…
Drawn by Hayman, etched by Gravelot, preserved in Folger ART Vol. b72
For the June 2019 “Crocodile Mystery” we asked you to spot the differences between these two pictures: Frontispiece illustration for Two Gentlemen of Verona from Thomas Hanmer’s 6-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published 1743-44: original drawing (A) and published print…
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…
Snakes! on a ... book?
“What is that?” someone asks, pointing to the corner of one of the books open for display. “This? Oh, it’s a book snake. Most useful object in the library!” I reply. This conversation happens once in nearly every book display…
To bind: Ligatures in Aldine Type
Yes, indeed. As many of you quickly identified, each of the images in this month’s mystery post contain at least one ligature. In fact, all of the images are from a single set of type: the Aldine italic that was…