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All 68 posts by

Heather Wolfe

is Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger. She loves convincing people that they can read English secretary hand and sharing quirky and unexpected collection finds and stories.
About that frontispiece portrait of Hannah Woolley....
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About that frontispiece portrait of Hannah Woolley....

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Heather Wolfe

I was delighted by the range of responses we got for last week’s Crocodile post on the identity of the woman in the engraving: Catherine of Braganza, Cleopatra, Lady Frances Egerton, Elizabeth Nash nee Hall (Shakespeare’s grand-daughter), Hannah Woolley, and…

Early modern head lice remedies; or, dealing with pediculosis, Renaissance-style
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Early modern head lice remedies; or, dealing with pediculosis, Renaissance-style

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Heather Wolfe

With assistance by Beth DeBold This post is dedicated to all those parents and caregivers who have gotten the dreaded phone call while at work: “your child has lice.” You have to drop everything and retrieve your child from school,…

Imagining an 18th century Jane Doe
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Imagining an 18th century Jane Doe

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Heather Wolfe

A fake woman with fake initials and a fake seal? What is going on with these early 18th century affidavits? Curator of Manuscripts Heather Wolfe explores burials, bureaucracy, and “ritualized compliance” in this post about two recent acquisitions.

Was early modern writing paper expensive?
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Was early modern writing paper expensive?

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Heather Wolfe

Many of us have repeated the assertion that writing paper in early modern England was expensive and scarce, but it has always bothered me. After hearing this fairly regularly in response to two common questions —“Why did people write on…

Imagining a lost set of commonplace books
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Imagining a lost set of commonplace books

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Heather Wolfe

As observed by one of our respondents, last week’s Crocodile was a detail from a blank leaf bisected by a vertical line in graphite, with a column of handwritten letters consisting of the Roman alphabet followed by the Greek alphabet. Folger…

Announcing EMMO's Beta Launch
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Announcing EMMO's Beta Launch

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Heather Wolfe Paul Dingman Sarah Powell

To kick off the new year at Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO), the EMMO team (Paul Dingman, Mike Poston, Sarah Powell, Caitlin Rizzo & Heather Wolfe, with additional thanks to Rebecca Niles) is thrilled to announce the launch of our…

William Shakespeare, Poet and Gentleman
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William Shakespeare, Poet and Gentleman

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Heather Wolfe Michael Witmore

The Guardian newspaper recently published an article about new manuscript discoveries concerning the life of William Shakespeare. These discoveries, made by Heather Wolfe, are described as a decisive blow to the belief that Shakespeare was a front man for someone…

Scissors inside books?
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Scissors inside books?

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Heather Wolfe

The rusty outline we showed in last week’s Crocodile post is, as one of our responders, Giles Bergel, correctly guessed, from a pair of scissors. It appears in Folger First Folio number 58, in Henry IV, part 1 (pp. 50-51). This First Folio…

I have sent you a Privy Seal...
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I have sent you a Privy Seal...

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Heather Wolfe Sarah Powell

The answer to last week’s crocodile mystery? As Jan Kellett correctly pointed out in her comment to the October Crocodile Mystery, the red-orange concentric circles in this image are an “offset mark made by a seal.” The mark was made…

Shakespeare the player: a new discovery sheds light on two Folger manuscripts
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Shakespeare the player: a new discovery sheds light on two Folger manuscripts

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Heather Wolfe

The reference to a coat of arms belonging to “Shakespeare the Player by Garter” in a manuscript at the Folger, V.a.350, has garnered much attention over the years. Folger MS V.a.350 is currently on loan to the British Library for their exhibition Shakespeare…

A Pictorial Table of Contents
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A Pictorial Table of Contents

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Heather Wolfe

Last week’s Crocodile was a jumble of household instruments with numbers next to them. As our first commenter, Katie Will, correctly guessed, the detail was from the table of contents of a type of heraldic manuscript known as an Ordinary.…

Textual variants in Shakespeare's love letter to Anne Hathaway
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Textual variants in Shakespeare's love letter to Anne Hathaway

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Heather Wolfe

When Shakespeare was young and in love, he wrote a gushing letter to his bride-to-be, enclosing with it a lock of his hair and five verses. Or that’s what an audacious teenager in the 1790s would have us all believe. The supposed love letter…

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