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Manuscripts

Manuscripts in the Folger collections
'I Grapple him to my Soul with hooks of Steel'
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'I Grapple him to my Soul with hooks of Steel'

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Author
Abbie Weinberg

I’m sure all of our readers know that moment when you’re looking for one thing but find something else entirely (some call it serendipity—I just call it research). Such as doing a Name Browse in Hamnet for “Adams” (I believe…

Marginal calculations; or, how old is that book?
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Marginal calculations; or, how old is that book?

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Heather Wolfe

I’d like to make a pitch for recording a specific type of manuscript annotation in printed books and manuscripts: the “book age calculation.” These calculations turn up frequently on pastedowns and endleaves, and sometimes right in the middle of texts.…

Tagging manuscripts: how much is too much?
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Tagging manuscripts: how much is too much?

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Paul Dingman

When it comes to the subject of tagging or encoding manuscript transcriptions in XML (extensible markup language) for Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO), two important questions are how much should we tag and when should we do it. With thousands…

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
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A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

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Sarah Powell

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…

"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": May 2015
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"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": May 2015

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Author
The Collation

This month’s crocodile is more of a challenge than a mystery. We are looking for paleographer beginners and lifers to have a stab at these lines and tell us the truth about sugar. If you think you know whose handwriting…

Golden quills and paleography skills
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Golden quills and paleography skills

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Paul Dingman

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…

Early modern eyebrow interpretation, or what it means to have a unibrow
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Early modern eyebrow interpretation, or what it means to have a unibrow

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Author
Heather Wolfe

While showing the Researching the Archive seminar some examples of manuscript receipt books a couple of weeks ago (randomly selected after doing a quick “form/genre” in Hamnet on the genre terms “Medical formularies” and “Cookbooks”), I was tickled to come across a section…

EMMO: advancing and expanding
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EMMO: advancing and expanding

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Paul Dingman

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…

Acquisitions Night: February 5, 2015
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Acquisitions Night: February 5, 2015

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Author
Erin Blake

Got your tickets yet? Acquisitions Night is just over a week away! This once-a-year event directly supports the growth of the collection by giving people the chance to “adopt” selected items acquired over the past year—that is, reimburse the purchase price to the library so…

An early modern color guide
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An early modern color guide

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Heather Wolfe

As I was answering a reference question yesterday relating to heraldic funeral processions in Folger MS V.a.447—a heraldic miscellany written by John Guillim shortly after he was made Portsmouth Pursuivant of Arms—my eyes snagged on a subsection near the end titled, “The names of…

Hard hands and strange words
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Hard hands and strange words

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Author
Heather Wolfe

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,…

A transcriba... what?
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A transcriba... what?

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Paul Dingman

The typical first awkwardly formed question is, “A transcriba…what, wait, what is it, again?” (Answer: “Transcribathon, an event running from noon to midnight in which we transcribe and encode manuscripts, the very first experimental event of its kind for Early Modern…

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