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 monument more lasting than bronze
exegi monumentum aere perennius regalique situ pyramidum altius, quod non imber edax, non Aquilo inpotens possit diruere… (Odes III: XXX, lines 1-4, published 23BC) I have built a monument more lasting than bronze, higher than the Pyramids’ regal structures, that…
Fallen Type
Those of you who replied to the Crocodile post last week guessed right: what you see in this image is a piece of fallen type that was printed by accident over a page of text being printed. The height of…
“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: March 2016
A new month and a new mystery. We’ll keep this short and sweet: What, exactly, are we seeing in this image? Leave your thoughts in the comments here, and we’ll be back on Tuesday with the answer.
Textual variants in Shakespeare's love letter to Anne Hathaway
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…
Documents, in microcosm
I have been part of the team that has been working to create Shakespeare Documented, which launched on January 20, 2016. In the last few weeks before launch, one of my main duties became the creation the thumbnail image for…
Formal designs
Did you solve last week’s crocodile mystery? It’s a sonnet! A visual representation of the phonetic structures of Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. XXIX, to be precise (rotated sideways to be extra-mysterious). The pattern was created by Marjory Bates Pratt in 1940,…
Chacolet
a Guest Post by Marissa Nicosia and Alyssa Connell Since we launched Cooking in the Archives in 2014 we’ve been looking for chocolate. We love chocolate, our friends and family who taste our recipes love chocolate, and we were pretty…
"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": February 2016
Welcome to the February crocodile mystery! We’ll jump right in: what is the image below? What does it represent? What does this have to do with Shakespeare?? Please share your thoughts, guesses, etc. using the “Leave a reply” box at…
The Amherst-Folger Fellows
As readers of The Collation know, the Folger welcomes scholars on fellowship, Folger Institute program participants, and individual readers to our reading rooms. But what our readers may not know is that each January, we open our doors to a…
Purchases from the Robert S. Pirie Collection, Part 3: the manuscripts
In addition to the printed books and embroidered bindings described in last week’s post, the Folger also acquired 26 early modern manuscripts at the Robert S. Pirie sale at Sotheby’s (New York) in early December 2015. They should be arriving…
Purchases from the Robert S. Pirie Collection, Part 2: the printed material
The Folger Shakespeare Library acquired 45 lots, 19 of them printed books, at the auction sale of the Pirie collection that took place on December 2–4, 2015, at Sotheby’s, New York (we’ve also put up the complete list of our…
Purchases from the Robert S. Pirie Collection, Part I
The latter portion of 2015 included a bit more excitement than usual around the Folger, as we gathered for several days in early December to feast (on popcorn, primarily), drink (coffee and tea), and engage in that most merciless of…