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Books

Books in the Folger collections
Marks in Manuals
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Marks in Manuals

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Bénédicte Miyamoto

A guest post by Bénédicte Miyamoto Are these manuals I spy in the workshop? It is impossible to read the spines of the books in the illustration of an artist’s workshop in Salomon de Caus’s 1612 La perspectiue: auec la…

The Many Different Ways to Make a Lacemaking Pattern Book: The Case of Vinciolo's Book
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The Many Different Ways to Make a Lacemaking Pattern Book: The Case of Vinciolo's Book

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Caroline Duroselle-Melish

Folger Shakespeare Library, NK9405.V5 1592 Cage. Photo by Caroline Duroselle-Melish Early modern lacemaking pattern books are ‘eye catching’ picture books with pages after pages of intricate designs. Unlike most modern pattern books, they generally include very little instructions on…

All the Purposes of a Library: a piece of blue ephemera
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All the Purposes of a Library: a piece of blue ephemera

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Elizabeth DeBold

Thanks to all of you who participated in guessing for this month’s Crocodile Mystery! As some of you noted, it is a book bound in eighteenth-century waste paper, particularly waste paper related to a late eighteenth-century edition of the Cyclopaedia:…

A Wyncoll's Tale
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A Wyncoll's Tale

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Elizabeth DeBold Heather Wolfe

Let’s face it, every special collections library has at least a few mystery items in the vault that are quietly passed down over the decades from curator to curator (or cataloger to cataloger, or acquisitions librarian to acquisitions librarian). These…

Dining with the Hermaphrodites: Courtly Excess and Dietary Manuals in Early Modern France
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Dining with the Hermaphrodites: Courtly Excess and Dietary Manuals in Early Modern France

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Kathleen Long

A guest post by Kathleen Long In 1605, a satirical novel, now known under the title L’Isle des Hermaphrodites (The Island of Hermaphrodites) was circulating on the streets of Paris. It was very popular at the time, according to contemporary…

Sizing Shakespeare's Sonnets
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Sizing Shakespeare's Sonnets

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Faith Acker

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…

Stuff in Books: a conundrum
Folger 265255
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Stuff in Books: a conundrum

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Elizabeth DeBold

When we think of book history, most of us focus on the creation, dissemination, and reception of texts. But as many scholars have begun to discuss in the last few years, books and manuscripts ended up being used in many…

A Dictionary for Don Quixote
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A Dictionary for Don Quixote

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Kathryn Vomero Santos

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…

Got Gout? Eighteenth-Century Global "Remedies" in Mary Kettilby’s Receipt Book
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Got Gout? Eighteenth-Century Global "Remedies" in Mary Kettilby’s Receipt Book

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April Fuller Laurel Bassett

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
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Book Stamps

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Caroline Duroselle-Melish

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
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Launching Global Environmental History: Dr. Thomas Short on Air and Diseases in 1749

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Ruma Chopra

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…

"What's in a Name?" or, Going Sideways
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"What's in a Name?" or, Going Sideways

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Elizabeth DeBold

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,…

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