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
“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: March 2020
It’s said that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. The Collation’s March 2020 Crocodile Mystery, however, comes in with a unicorn and stag, and the following questions: what is this object, and why is…
First Folger Director: William Adams Slade, Part I
A Guest Post by Stephen H. Grant Dear Collators, at a Fall 2019 reception in the Great Hall, I captured a rare historic moment in the Library’s history. We contemplate the personification of more than a third of a century…
"Lusty" sack possets, fertility, and the foodways of early modern weddings
A guest post by Sasha Handley Take ye yolks of 14 Egs & six whites & boyle them very well strain them into a pewter Bason put a quarte of a pint of Sack to them a grated nutmeg a…
Mellow Yellow and 50 Shades of Grey: the challenges of bi-tonal images
Well, I’m afraid our mystery image might have been a little too mysterious. For those of you still playing along, the mystery image from last week is an image from a microfilm of Folger MS D.a.6 that seems to show…
“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: February 2020
Welcome back to our monthly Crocodile Mystery! For those of you (ahem) mystified by this designation for our reoccurring series of posts, take a look at the post where it was named! For the question this month, we’re returning to…
Ben Greet: “Thank God for Henry Clay Folger”
A guest post by Stephen Grant First, a most Happy New Year to you all! I’m sure that 2020 is the beginning of a big decade for the Folger!! And I can’t wait until the Folger Centennial in 2032!!! For…
Sizing Shakespeare's Sonnets
A guest post by Faith Acker I still remember the first rare book I handled in a library. It was Thomas Caldecott’s copy of the Shake-speares Sonnets. Neuer before imprinted (Thomas Thorpe, 1609) a beautiful quarto that Caldecott presented to…
The Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Verse Miscellany
A guest post by Betty Schellenberg Recently I’ve been exploring the very active literary lives of eighteenth-century lower gentry and middle-class individuals. Many of these socially obscure people not only composed and exchanged verse in manuscript form within their own…
Happy New Year (by one calendar anyway)
We’re well aware that around the world, and across time, there are many calendars (boy howdy do we know that), but if the calendar that you use is about to change over to January 1, 2020, we wish you a…
December Greetings
As we pass the winter solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the days grow longer at last (apologies to our readers in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s all down hill for you), we wanted to take a moment and wish…
The Wandering Soul: On Meeting Theadora Wilkin
A guest post by William Cook Miller While at the Folger Shakespeare Library over the summer, I came across a manuscript so exciting, so intriguing, so multifaceted, that I spent a full week combing through it, photographing it, trying to…
No Standard Oil Company? No Shakespeare Collection!
A Guest Post by Stephen Grant A decade ago when I was determining angles to consider in approaching Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, some readers—perhaps at 3 pm Folger tea—recommended I write only on the Folgers…