Folger Collections
“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”
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
Collection Connections: Magic and Mayhem in the Tudor Court: Juno Dawson's "Queen B"
We revisit Beth DeBold’s June 2025 presentation as part of our Folger Book Club discussion of Juno Dawson’s Queen B.
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.
Collection Connections: Specters of Hamlet and AI as RenAIssance Technology
We revisit Alexa Alice Joubin’s May 2025 presentation as part of our Folger Book Club discussion of Em Liu’s The Death I Gave Him.
Fuseli's Shakespeare Paintings
One of 18th-century Britain’s most prolific narrative painters, Henry Fuseli found inspiration in Shakespeare, with his painting of Macbeth and the witches one of his “best poetical conceptions.”