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Three chords and the truth
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Three chords and the truth

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Rachel B. Dankert

There are moments when a song is the best way to convey an emotional message. Even though songs are mostly public things, they still can feel intensely personal. Popular songs in early modern England were sung in ballad form. At…

When Blog History Meets Book History
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When Blog History Meets Book History

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Sarah Werner

When I was starting my transformation from a theater scholar to a book historian around 2006, the world of social media, as we now call it, was not only a source of community and information about the field, but a…

Facial Misrecognition
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Facial Misrecognition

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Wan-Chuan Kao

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
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Birds, Beasts, Maps, and Books: The Search for Richard Daniel, Esquire

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Danielle Skeehan

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
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Making rum in unexpected places

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Jordan Smith

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…

Postcards of the Folger: Richard the Third, Hamlet, First Part Henry the Fovrth
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Postcards of the Folger: Richard the Third, Hamlet, First Part Henry the Fovrth

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Stephen H. Grant

A guest post by Stephen Grant The final three bas-reliefs along the Folger’s north wall are Richard the Third, Hamlet, and Henry the Fourth, Part 1. The images shown here are from the same two sets of postcards that were discussed in…

The "Greco Deco" Folger Shakespeare Library
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The "Greco Deco" Folger Shakespeare Library

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Erin Blake

The About page for this blog declares that The Collation “seeks to present bite-sized glimpses of the materials found within our walls.” That’s a bit tricky at the moment: like most of the rest of the Folger staff, I haven’t…

Subscribing to the blog
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Subscribing to the blog

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The Collation

As some of you have noticed (and kindly reached out to us about!), we’re having a little bit of technical difficulties with the built-in blog subscription module. (You may have noticed that the lovely “subscribe here!” box that usually lives…

Summer Retrospective: Deciphering Signature Marks
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Summer Retrospective: Deciphering Signature Marks

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The Collation

It seems appropriate to finish up our summer retrospective series with one of the earliest (and perennially most popular) posts. Whether it’s a back-to-basics refresher for you or an answer to the question you’ve been asking yourself, Deciphering Signature Marks…

Summer Retrospective
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Summer Retrospective

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The Collation

Happy summer, everyone! (Or happy winter, if you’re in the southern hemisphere!) From now until the end of August, we’re going to be doing a summer retrospective here on The Collation, highlighting some of our past posts. This blog has…

Snakes! on a ... book?
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Snakes! on a ... book?

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Abbie Weinberg

“What is that?” someone asks, pointing to the corner of one of the books open for display. “This? Oh, it’s a book snake. Most useful object in the library!” I reply. This conversation happens once in nearly every book display…

“Run away”: a life in 78 words
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“Run away”: a life in 78 words

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Simon P. Newman

A guest post by Simon Newman His name was Quoshey , an Akan day name that tells us he was quite likely born on a Sunday on the Gold Coast of West Africa. But on Christmas Day 1700 Quashey was…

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