Folger Finds

Have you seen some of the smallest books in the Folger Shakespeare Library collection? We’ve been sharing miniature Folger Finds on Instagram throughout the year as these books joined a rotating display of items from the James L. Harner Collection of…

Early versions of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 show its immense popularity and point to Falstaff’s origins as the real-life figure Sir John Oldcastle.

Does this dollhouse copy of Shakespeare’s plays belong to Barbie?

The Folger’s collection includes a miniature set of Shakespeare’s plays that belonged to the Man in Black himself.

Food is intimately connected to climate and season. It was for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and it is for us today. Beautiful, local produce is once again available in the northeast now that spring is turning into early summer. In…

Love’s Labor’s Lost is one of three Shakespeare plays without a primary source (the others being A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest), but that doesn’t mean it was created in a vacuum. Using four items from the Folger collection,…

Italian regions share a culinary history that is rooted in the ingredients, tastes, and techniques that came out of early-modern innovations, explorations, and cultural movements.

Food historian and The Great British Baking Show winner Mary-Anne Boermans writes about piecing together 17th-century manuscript recipes for Taffety Tarts.

Nora Titone, author of a book on Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth, shares highlights from the Folger’s Booth collection.

These recent additions to the Folger collection relate to a range of early Shakespeare films that represented important firsts, won awards, and witnessed the transition from silent films to “talkies.”

Among the many treasures of the Folger is a lavish “Cosway binding” that includes five unique miniatures by a 20th-century British artist, “Miss C. B. Currie,” based on the images from the book itself. One of the oddest to modern…

Enjoy our five most popular #FolgerFinds posts on Instagram of items from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection, from a silhouette of a ‘Midsummer’ scene with Bottom and Titania to vintage photos of 19th-century actress Julia Marlowe.