Sarah Hovde

I first encountered this book three years ago, in 2015. Intrigued by its sparse catalog record, which at that point consisted of a cataloger-supplied title (“”), an estimated page count, and little more, I went down to the vault to…

As the common saying goes, only death and taxes are certain. However, consider the uncertainties that can accompany any tax season: missing W-2s, e-file services incompatible with your browser, shifting standards, mathematical errors… That’s enough about taxes! Let’s talk about…

Black actor J.A. Arneaux starred as the title character in the Astor Place Company’s production of Richard III and published his own 19th-century edition.

As several philatelically-astute readers quickly identified, the portrait of Shakespeare shown in last week’s Crocodile mystery is from a stamp!     These one shilling stamps were issued annually for a number of years at the turn of the 20th…

Lewis Carroll gave this lovely 1868 edition of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with delicate cut-paper images by Paul Konewka, to his illustrator for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” John Tenniel.

Transparencies, popular in the late 1700s, use back-lighting to reveal a secret image. See one from the Folger collection that reveals Shakespeare’s ghost in Westminster Abbey.

A few months ago, I wrote about the process of creating brief catalog records for the Folger’s playbill collection. Since then, I’ve completed records for playbills from London and all of Scotland, and have begun working my way through playbills…

Famous Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928) took the liberty of correcting certain biographical errors in a book about her friend Henry Irving.

I was pretty intrigued when I pulled this case marked “Shakespearian novelties” from the shelf in the Vault… Spine of the case housing four “Shakespearian novelettes” … then I realized that it actually said “Shakespearian novelettes,” and my excitement dimmed…

See playbills from the Folger collection of amateur (and fundraising) performances by Charles Dickens, from Wilkie Collins to Shakespeare.

The pages of this 1930 edition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet look insect-eaten or worse, but they’re actually made out of sheets of cork, not paper.

You’re probably aware that a significant amount of the Folger’s collection remains uncataloged; the majority of items have at least brief records in our online catalog Hamnet, but even today some collections are accessible only through the card catalog. We don’t…