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The Collation

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

A guided tour of an incunabulum from 1478
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A guided tour of an incunabulum from 1478

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Sujata Iyengar

A guest post by Sujata Iyengar Typography—the design of individual printed letter-shapes—makes printed books easier to read, and it can also shape our understanding and experience of the text and the content that an individual book contains. At first, early…

Thoroughly Modern Helena
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Thoroughly Modern Helena

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Abbie Weinberg

What do Robert Browning, Anna Maria Hall, Geraldine Jewsbury, John Ruskin, and Anna Swanwick, have in common? Quite a bit, actually. But in the Folger’s collection, they were the five “recipients” of Helena Faucit’s essays that formed the volume On…

Birdbrained
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Birdbrained

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Elizabeth DeBold

Thanks to everyone who took a guess on this month’s Crocodile Mystery! As several of you pointed out, the teaser image is of some breed of cockatoo or cockatiel. Although I usually know a hawk from a handsaw, I will…

“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: September 2020
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“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: September 2020

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The Collation

Welcome back for another Crocodile post! As you face the new challenges Fall brings to us, take a few moments to breathe out, and take a look at this month’s mystery. What’s going on in this image? Where is it…

Introduction to a Slightly Modified Theme: Postcards in the (home) archive
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Introduction to a Slightly Modified Theme: Postcards in the (home) archive

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Stephen H. Grant

A guest post by Stephen Grant The thematic series I started Aug. 12, 2019, “Postcards in the Folger Archives,” has come to a pause.  It has not escaped my dear collational readers’ attention that in my most recent post I…

The “Quartermaster’s Map” of England and Wales
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The “Quartermaster’s Map” of England and Wales

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Erin Blake

Thanks for the excellent guesses on the identity of the August Crocodile Mystery! If you’ll permit me to indulge myself, I’ll prolong the suspense a little longer by showing some examples of what it might have been, but isn’t (and…

“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: August, 2020
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“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: August, 2020

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The Collation

Some types of publication have fairly standard proportions. For example, you can be pretty sure this oblong volume isn’t a Bible or a play text: Front cover of The pen’s excellencie, or, The secretaries delighte / Written by Martin Billingsley.…

2020-2021 Folger Research Fellows
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2020-2021 Folger Research Fellows

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Leah Thomas

The Folger Institute is pleased to announce our 2020-2021 cohort of Folger Institute Research Fellows. From the outset, we knew this year would be different. The Folger Institute marks its fiftieth anniversary this year, and the Folger Shakespeare Library is…

Emily Jordan Folger and Joseph Quincy Adams
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Emily Jordan Folger and Joseph Quincy Adams

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Stephen H. Grant

A guest post by Stephen Grant “The Hall was demolished in 1928,” Joan Harrison writes in Glen Cove, Images of America (2008), “for the building of Morgan Park,” named after financier J. P. Morgan. Emily Folger would have known when…

Getting Dressed with the Hermaphrodites
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Getting Dressed with the Hermaphrodites

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Kathleen Long

A guest post by Kathleen Long (Editor’s Note: You can read Kathleen’s previous post, Dining with the Hermaphrodites, for a discussion of another aspect the novel.) The inhabitants of the island depicted in the 1605 French novel, The Island of…

Heraldic Colors
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Heraldic Colors

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Abbie Weinberg

Yes, indeed. The letters in this month’s mystery image are B, O, and G, and they represent what is missing from the image: color!  The mystery image is a detail of a coat of arms in Folger MS V.b.256, which…

“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: July 2020
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“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: July 2020

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Author
The Collation

Welcome back for another Crocodile Mystery! As you enjoy this first week of July (really? really? Who said the calendar could do that?), spare some thoughts for this mystery image. What’s going on in this image? What are those letters…

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