paleography

The answer to last week’s Crocodile mystery is, as some of you guessed, £135 15s 0d (or 135 pounds, 15 shillings). This amount is a snippet of one entry made on a page in Folger MS V.b.308, the account book of…

There are thousands of manuscripts sitting quietly amongst the Folger’s ever-growing collection which Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) aims to transcribe. Earlier this year EMMO collaborated with Zooniverse, a hugely successful online crowd-sourcing platform, so that people all over the…

Over the past few months, EMMO has been busy with several first-ever activities connected to transcribing manuscripts at the Folger. In August, we transcribed excerpts from over twenty four manuscripts currently exhibited in the Age of Lawyers Exhibition (running until…

John Ward’s sixteen notebooks, once they are fully transcribed for EMMO, are going to be an incredibly rich source for nearly everyone who thinks about or studies early modern England. Most people have heard about them because of John Ward’s…

There is a place in the north Atlantic Ocean where emerald waters and sandy shores await your toes—at least, according to a 2015 holiday brochure on Barbados. The royalist Richard Ligon scarpered there in 1647 after backing the losing side…

In my last post about EMMO’s progress, I briefly mentioned Practical Paleography or “PracPaleo,” our intentionally relaxed, no-registration-required introduction to transcribing secretary hand for readers and staff at the Folger Shakespeare Library. This time around, I thought it would be…

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…

Until you get the hang of it, Henry Oxinden’s secretary hand is just plain difficult. Take a stab at this passage from p. 469 of his Miscellany (ca. 1642-1670), Folger MS V.b.110, extracted from a sermon delivered by Charles Herle at Winwick,…

The Folger is thrilled to share the news that we are the recipient of a generous three year National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to create Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO), an online searchable…

When we get to “deposition day” in paleography class, one of the manuscripts that the students usually transcribe is Folger MS L.d.673, in which one John Bartholomew confesses to buying six iron pots, but no hats. Bartholomew states that he…

Here’s a little transcription exercise for our Crocodile readers: Folger MS V.a.429, fol. 29r. This is the title of a recipe in a book of culinary and medical receipts compiled between approximately 1675 and 1750 by a few generations of…

As part of their paleography training, my paleography students always spend a bit of each afternoon working in pairs on transcriptions. It gives them a break from being in the “spotlight” as we go around the room reading manuscripts line…