Posts By: Guest Author

The Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Verse Miscellany

January 7, 2020 | By Guest Author

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 social networks, but also copied out and arranged contemporary poetry that they found in printed sources. My primary evidence for this is the manuscript verse miscellany.… Continue Reading

The Wandering Soul: On Meeting Theadora Wilkin

December 19, 2019 | By Guest Author

A guest post by William Cook Miller While at the Folger Shakespeare Library over the summer, I came across a manuscript so exciting, so intriguing, so multifaceted, that I spent a full week combing through it, photographing it, trying to crack its mysteries. That manuscript is by a little-known—or rather, as far as I have been able to find, totally unknown—writer named Theadora Wilkin, and it bears the daunting title, The WANDERING SOUL in Conference with ADAM, NOAH, and SIMON CLEOPAS (Folger MS W.a.131-132) While the manuscript is not dated, it was probably a work long in progress.… Continue Reading

No Standard Oil Company? No Shakespeare Collection!

December 10, 2019 | By Guest Author

A Guest Post by Stephen Grant A decade ago when I was determining angles to consider in approaching Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, some readers—perhaps at 3 pm Folger tea—recommended I write only on the Folgers as collectors. As I was writing the very first biography of the couple, I finally decided it made little sense to focus on how they spent their money at the neglect of how they earned it in the first place.… Continue Reading

Henry Clay Folger’s Deltiological Profile, Part II

November 14, 2019 | By Guest Author

A Guest Post by Stephen Grant Collators, we pick up from the series of picture postcards Henry Folger sent to his wife Emily in Brooklyn during his Standard Oil Company business trips to western states in 1910. The Truckee River flows northeasterly from California to Nevada. The sole outlet of Lake Tahoe, the river is an important source of irrigation for the region.… Continue Reading

A Dictionary for Don Quixote

November 12, 2019 | By Guest Author

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 language are especially exciting. Annotations, corrections, and translations in the margins and fly leaves can offer a glimpse, partial though it may be, into the purposes and processes for acquiring another tongue.… Continue Reading

Learning to Weep: Early Modern Readers Reading Saint Peters Complaint (1595)

October 18, 2019 | By Guest Author

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, sigh, and groan over their sins, and their audiences seem to have complied—or tried to comply—-with enthusiasm. We are familiar with the idea that medieval and Counter-Reformation Catholics embraced bodily expressions of penitence, including intensive weeping, but early modern Protestants also emphasize the value of devotional weeping.… Continue Reading

Henry Clay Folger’s Deltiological Profile, Part I

October 9, 2019 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Stephen Grant Like Emily Jordan Folger, Henry Clay Folger manifests his deltiological profile in two ways. First, he purchases picture postcards and sends them to his wife when he is on business trips. I found no evidence that he sends postcards to anyone else but Emily. Secondly, Henry’s interest in postcards is one way for him to boost his Shakespeariana collection.… Continue Reading

The Newsy Baronet: how Richard Newdigate (per)used his newsletters

September 19, 2019 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Elisabeth Chaghafi Large collections of books or manuscripts may be interesting for two reasons: the actual content of the items they contain, and also what they reveal about the collector who compiled them. The Folger’s Newdigate family collection of newsletters (Folger MS L.c.1-3950) is an excellent example of this. The inclusion of these newsletters in the Shakespeare’s World site has led to the transcription of a large portion of them, which in turn leads to a greater understanding of the collection as a whole.… Continue Reading

Emily Jordan Folger’s Deltiological Profile

September 12, 2019 | By Guest Author

A guest post by Stephen Grant It would be more than a stretch to claim that Henry and Emily Folger were deltiologists, that is, as Collins Dictionary reminds us, persons who collect and study picture postcards. However, postcards played a definite role in each of their lives. Emily’s deltiological profile includes picking out a postcard and slipping it in an envelope along with a letter.… Continue Reading

Got Gout? Eighteenth-Century Global “Remedies” in Mary Kettilby’s Receipt Book

September 10, 2019 | By Guest Author

A guest post by April Fuller and Laurel Bassett In her early eighteenth-century recipe, “A Drink for the Gout,” Mary Kettilby’s list of ingredients contain both homegrown roots and objects of empire “pressed into service” for the recovery of the English subject against “Sharp Humours that occasion that dismal Tormenting Distemper.” The availability of spices, in quantity and at more affordable prices in the eighteenth-century, made it possible for men and women up and down the social ladder to take familiar English recipes and add an international twist.… Continue Reading