Folger Collections
Noticing the weirdness of texts
Sometimes it’s fun just to look at books without worrying what they are and who printed them and what the text says. And sometimes, when you do that, you notice all sorts of ways in which they’re weird—they mix manuscript…
Proof prints, part two; or, Proofs and proofiness
Last month’s post from me (your friendly neighborhood art historian) looked at trial proofs and progressive proofs (see Proof prints, part one). As promised, here’s a look at a third kind of proof in printmaking: proofs that aren’t really “proofs” as…
The Single Vine Leaf, aka the "Aldine Leaf"
I have always been a devotee of the “Aldine leaf”, even long before I knew its exact name or where it actually came from, and I am still delighted spotting it in early modern typography or when it is expertly…
Shakespeare's personal library, as curated by William Henry Ireland
Co-written by Heather Wolfe and Arnold Hunt It’s every bibliophile’s dream. You’re in a bookshop, or maybe at a local auction, browsing idly along the shelves. It’s late in the afternoon and you’re just preparing to leave, when you spot a…
An alter'd case: An annotated copy of The Roaring Girl
A guest post by Victoria Myers The marks in the book The reason that I found the Folger Shakespeare Library’s copy of The Roaring Girl especially interesting is because it is completely marked up. Most of these marks are corrections…
Annotating and collaborating
This month’s crocodile mystery was, as Andrew Keener quickly identified, an image from Gabriel Harvey’s copy of Lodovico Domenichi’s Facetie and (Folger H.a.2): Gabriel Harvey’s heavily annotated copy of Facetie (fol. 1v-2r) There is a lot that could be said about Gabriel…
The Role of Pants in Pants Roles
Emily Trask as Viola In Folger Theatre’s Twelfth Night. Photo: Scott Suchman. Pants. Slacks. Breeches. Knickers. Overalls. Pantaloons. Pedal Pushers. Trousers. Jeans. Bloomers. Jodhpurs. Khakis. Drawers. Call them what you will, in our production of What You Will – of…
Proof prints, part one
Last time I posted on The Collation (Two disciplines separated by a common language, 30 April 2013), I went off on a bit of a rant about vocabulary barriers between printed pictures and printed words. Guess what? There’s more! That…
Ten copies of the “bad” 1640 Sonnets in good and bad shape
The Folger Shakespeare Library has ten copies of the second edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets (STC 22344). All ten copies of STC 22344 in a row Engraved portrait (fol. p1v) and the first title page (fol. *1r) from copy 1 The…
Looking like a book
Last month I wrote about a book—nay, a leaf of a book—and the secret histories it reveals about how it was made, from the growth of the tree that became the woodblock to the valleys and hills that formed during…
Learning to write the alphabet
Learning to write the alphabet is one of the first stages of writing literacy. For early modern English children, this meant first learning to read the letters of the alphabet (printed in black letter) from a hornbook. Hornbook. Folger Shakespeare Library…
Pen facsimiles of early print
As the commenters on last week’s crocodile guessed, the mystery image showed writing masquerading as print or, to use the more formal term, a pen facsimile (click on any of the images in the post to enlarge them): pen facsimile…