Folger-Penn Press interview and excerpt: Megan Heffernan, Making the Miscellany
In 2015, The Folger Shakespeare Library and the University of Pennsylvania Press established a cooperative agreement to publish volumes emerging from work substantially shaped by engagement with the Folger collections, often under the aegis of Folger Institute funding. Authors published…
Facial Misrecognition
A guest post by Wan-Chuan Kao Oliver Sacks, who brought to popular awareness many cognitive conditions that are simultaneously debilitating and fascinating—such as visual agnosia, of which face blindness is one type—observes that “our faces bear the stamp of our…
Birds, Beasts, Maps, and Books: The Search for Richard Daniel, Esquire
A guest post by Danielle Skeehan Even before research libraries shut down in March 2020, digitization efforts had already changed how we access archives and how we can do research. From the comfort of my home, I can do a…
Making rum in unexpected places
Note from the editors: we are testing a new image viewer in this post, and there are some bugs still to work out. If any of the images aren’t loading for you and you see a blank box instead, try clearing…
Balancing information and expertise: vernacular guidance on bloodletting in early modern calendars and almanacs
A guest post by Mary Yearl The first calendar printed as a book in Europe was also the first to contain a printed image of a bloodletting man.1 This point alone is indicative of the importance bloodletting played in medieval…
Touching Tusser
A guest post by Andy Crow “As to the bindings, the plain crushed levant looks all right, but when you send me my copy, I would like it, please, in sheep—about the tint of a ripe chestnut. That is fittest…
A Cacique By Any Other Name
… Or, Etymologies in Translation, from the Caribbean to London A guest post by Valeria López Fadul The word “cacique”—a leader or lord among the people of the Caribbean islands—first appeared in an English book in 1555.1 Richard Eden’s translation…
Who was a refugee in early modern England? The “Poor Palatines” of 1709
A guest post by Jeremy Fradkin Today’s Collation post is a little bit different. It showcases materials held in archival collections at the British Library and the National Archives, both in the United Kingdom. It is the product of an…
A guided tour of an incunabulum from 1478
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…
2020-2021 Folger Research Fellows
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…
Getting Dressed with the Hermaphrodites
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…
Following the Trail of Counterfeits in the Folger’s Reformation Collection
A guest post by Drew Thomas Among the many collections at the Folger, besides its magnificent Shakespeare Collection, is the Stickelberger Collection of Reformation Tracts. This valuable collection, purchased by the Folger in 1977, was compiled by the Swiss writer…