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The Collation

One of the best bits of my job as a reference librarian here at the Folger (oh, who am I kidding? They’re all “best bits”) is answering research questions from scholars who are not on site. I really enjoy being someone’s hands and eyes, to look at our collection materials when they cannot. These questions have sent me off in directions I never would have dreamed of; there is no better way to learn a collection than to use it, and I am certainly getting the opportunity to explore the depth and breadth of our collection. Here are a few of the research questions I have been allowed to delve into recently. Many thanks to all of the researchers mentioned herein for their gracious permission to post this!

Henry Wotton’s The Elements of Architecture, 1624

Richard Foster, the Fellows’ Librarian at Winchester College in England, wrote to us asking if someone could take a look at sig. L4v of Wotton’s The Elements of Architecture, since it was noted in the Hamnet record that there were manuscript corrections to the text. Indeed there are, and so I dutifully took a picture and sent it off, not thinking too much of the request—until I got Mr. Foster’s reply.

Comments

There are, I think, too many divergent letter forms, both in the English and the Greek, in Wotton’s notes for both to be in the same hand in the two copies of his book illustrated. Have copies been found without the ms. annotations ?

John Drackley — November 13, 2014

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