Folger Fellows
Marks in Manuals
A guest post by Bénédicte Miyamoto Are these manuals I spy in the workshop? It is impossible to read the spines of the books in the illustration of an artist’s workshop in Salomon de Caus’s 1612 La perspectiue: auec la…
Hooked on Book Furniture...
… corners, clasps (and other interesting metal parts of a book)! A guest post by Dawn Hoffmann What makes these little (and some not so tiny) metal parts so intriguing? Why were they put on these books and who might…
Dining with the Hermaphrodites: Courtly Excess and Dietary Manuals in Early Modern France
A guest post by Kathleen Long In 1605, a satirical novel, now known under the title L’Isle des Hermaphrodites (The Island of Hermaphrodites) was circulating on the streets of Paris. It was very popular at the time, according to contemporary…
Translating the Chinese classic 'The Peony Pavilion' with a 'Shakespearean flavor'
The Peony Pavilion. “Kunqu performance at Peking University.” Wikimedia Commons / Antonis SHEN / CC BY-SA 2.0 Could Chinese literature be more popular with English-speaking audiences if translators favored words, phrases and poetic forms that spark associations with Shakespeare? This…
"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…
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…
A Dictionary for Don Quixote
A guest post by Kathryn Vomero Santos For scholars interested in the history of translation and language learning in early modern England, signs of use in books designed to teach their users how to read, speak, or write in another…
Learning to Weep: Early Modern Readers Reading Saint Peters Complaint (1595)
A guest post by Clarissa Chenovick Devotional weeping was serious business in early modern England. In an impressive array of bestselling print sermons and spiritual treatises, preachers and writers of varied religious persuasions exhort their hearers and readers to weep,…
2019-2020 Folger Fellows
The Folger Institute is pleased to announce our 2019-2020 cohort of Fellows. This year we will welcome forty-four Fellows to the Folger, including five long-term scholars: Clarissa Chenovick, John Kuhn, Kathleen Long, Anna More, and Seth Stewart Williams. In anticipation…
Launching Global Environmental History: Dr. Thomas Short on Air and Diseases in 1749
A guest post by Ruma Chopra It took the English doctor Thomas Short eighteen years to publish his nearly 1000-page assessment of the relationship between climates and diseases. Published in 1749, his two-volume history, A general chronological history of the…
All the world and half a dozen lemons
A guest post by Lauren Working Letter from Thomas Wood to Richard Bagot, 10 October 1576, Folger MS L.a.987 (click for zoomable version) Thomas Wood’s 1576 letter to Richard Bagot begins conventionally enough. Wood was sending some artichoke “slips” with…