The Collation
Research and Exploration at the Folger

The Collation is a gathering of useful information and observations from Folger staff and researchers. Read more about this blog

Conservation Interns at Work
Conservation interns from the Folger and Library of Congress share their experience working across both institutions to learn new techniques for treating materials and for preparing materials for exhibition.

“I have lately been promoted to the ‘big douche’”
Through her correspondence, Delia Salter Bacon reveals what it was like to undergo a 19th century “water-cure”

Performing Race in the London Lord Mayors’ Show, 1660-1708
Fellow Jamie Gemmell explores how race was performed in the annual London Lord Mayor’s Show

Defining Beauty in Text and Image in the late Seventeenth-Century
Fellow Jean Marie Christensen explores beauty standards of the 17th century.

Medicinal Plants, Colonial Weeds, and Biodiversity Loss
Herbarius: A New Herbal for the Anthropocene, by 2024-25 artist research fellow Suzette Marie Martin, is a “deconstructed manuscript” series of paintings that traces the intercontinental dispersal of non-native plant species through formerly valued medicinal herbs, now despised as weeds.

Adages and Annotations
In which a 16th century monk flips Erika off, and we all pick out our next tattoos

Semantics: Ars Minor or Ars Major?
Fellow Layla Zeitouni explains how the Term “Major” Allowed the Gutenberg Bible to Supersede the Donatus

Thomas Nashe’s Almond for a Parrat (1590), corrected by the author
Identifying handwritten corrections by the author Thomas Nashe in his own work, Almond for a Parrat

Color of Character: Racial Cues in the Visual Othello
A participant in the undergraduate seminar, Whose Sovereignty?, explores depictions of Othello in the Folger collection

Twelfth Night in the Folger Collection
Our assistant curator highlights a new acquisition and other material in our collection related to Twelfth Night

Sitting with the Book of Martyrs
A participant in the undergraduate seminar, Whose Sovereignty?, experiences the materiality of the 1583 edition of John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments

Deep Dive into Gorakh Dhanda or what Partington thought of Indian Shakespeare in 1913
Fellow Anandi Rao takes a close look at a copy of an Urdu translation of The Comedy of Errors.