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Manuscripts

Manuscripts in the Folger collections
Filing, seventeenth-century style
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Filing, seventeenth-century style

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Heather Wolfe

When we think of filing today, we think of digital files and folders, and manilla folders, hanging files, and filing cabinets. But what did filing look like in early modern England? How did people deal with all their receipts and…

A manuscript misattribution?
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A manuscript misattribution?

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Heather Wolfe

This post was originally going to be titled “Murder in the Archives” and was going to be about an account in William Westby’s 1688 diary (Folger MS V.a.469) of the discovery of a dismembered body found scattered on a dung…

A letter from Queen Anne to Buckingham locked with silk embroidery floss
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A letter from Queen Anne to Buckingham locked with silk embroidery floss

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Heather Wolfe

No, it’s not Lady Gaga’s hairline or the frizz on one of those creepy troll dolls. These were not real guesses from our readers, but the musings of Collation editorial staff when faced with an absence of comments to our…

A third manuscript by Thomas Trevelyon/Trevilian
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A third manuscript by Thomas Trevelyon/Trevilian

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Heather Wolfe

The author’s name in the Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608 (Folger MS V.b.232, fol. 264v); click image to enlarge in Luna. Many Collation readers are already familiar with the Folger’s Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608 (Folger MS V.b.232), and the fabulous Trevilian…

Such a lucky pretty little library...
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Such a lucky pretty little library...

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Heather Wolfe

First leaf of Visus Libelli (a little book of advices) We thought we’d kick off your weekend with an amusing and fascinating hybrid book that is ripe for research. The as-yet unidentified compiler of this late seventeenth-century, ca. 800-leaf volume,…

An exercise in collaborative editing: Anthony Bagot's letters and Nathaniel Bacon's pirate depositions
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An exercise in collaborative editing: Anthony Bagot's letters and Nathaniel Bacon's pirate depositions

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Heather Wolfe

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…

Printer's waste or endleaf?
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Printer's waste or endleaf?

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Heather Wolfe

Last week’s crocodile mystery concerned the nature of a fragment of paper used to repair a letter from Thomas Cromwell to Nicholas Wotton written in 1539. This mystery is probably not the first, or the last, time that our answers…

"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": September edition
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"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": September edition

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The Collation

Don’t panic—it’s still August, but rather than wait until the middle of September to share the new crocodile mystery,  I’m going to share it now and Heather will discuss it next week. At initial glance, it’s pretty clear what’s illustrated…

The material history of... ?
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The material history of... ?

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Erin Blake

The phrase “history of the book” is commonly used as a catch-all for the history and study of the physical components and technology behind traditional printer’s-ink-on-folded-paper-in-a-binding books, whether or not the thing being studied is itself a traditional book or…

Believe it or not: strange accidents and reports
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Believe it or not: strange accidents and reports

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Heather Wolfe

“Strange Accidentes” and “Strange Reportes” from Folger MS E.a.6, fols. 84v-85r (click image to enlarge) Early modern jokes and curiosities have a way of making us feel like insiders and outsiders at the same time. We’ll encounter jokes such…

This post is brought to you by the letter L
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This post is brought to you by the letter L

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Heather Wolfe

A cadel initial “L” with anthropomorphic features on leaf 2 of Augustine Vincent’s copy of Nomotechnia, by Henry Finch (1607) This letter L is an example of a cadel initial, or lettre cadeau, with anthropomorphic features; that is, it is…

Pew-hopping in St. Margaret's Church
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Pew-hopping in St. Margaret's Church

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Heather Wolfe Kathleen Lynch

Manuscripts of unusual shapes and sizes are always fun to investigate, and we recently had the opportunity to reevaluate a particularly large and interesting one, a ca. 1600 “pew plan” written on a piece of parchment (Folger MS X.d.395), in…

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