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The Collation

The Collation

Research and Exploration at the Folger

The Collation is a gathering of useful information and observations from Folger staff and researchers. Read more about this blog

Ten copies of the “bad” 1640 Sonnets in good and bad shape
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Ten copies of the “bad” 1640 Sonnets in good and bad shape

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Author
Goran Proot

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
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Looking like a book

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Author
Sarah Werner

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
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Learning to write the alphabet

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Author
Heather Wolfe

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
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Pen facsimiles of early print

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Author
Sarah Werner

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…

"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": May 2013
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"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": May 2013

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Author
The Collation

Another month, another mystery for your riddling. What might be going on in this image? I’m not asking you to identify the text Revelation 21:1-6 but to look at it and speculate on what we might see and say about…

Two disciplines separated by a common language
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Two disciplines separated by a common language

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Author
Erin Blake

I should have seen it coming when the Art History professor and the English professor started talking with each other about “print culture” (names omitted to protect reputations). It soon became clear that one had been talking about the circulation…

Mors comoedia. A comedy a hundred years old brought to life again in 1726
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Mors comoedia. A comedy a hundred years old brought to life again in 1726

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Author
Goran Proot

Sheer chance is an important factor in research. Some sixteen years ago I was surveying a sammelband held at Antwerp University Library that contained 257 programs documenting theater performances in Jesuit schools in Flanders. For the results of this research,…

First Folios online
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First Folios online

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Author
Sarah Werner

Editor’s Note, March 30, 2016: Sarah now is maintaining an up-to-date list of digitized First Folios on her personal site. When you’ve finished reading this post, please head over there to check out the current list. I imagine that you’re…

Interleaving history: an illustrated Book of Common Prayer
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Interleaving history: an illustrated Book of Common Prayer

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Author
Whitney Anne Trettien

A guest post by Whitney Anne Trettien In Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones, Partridge and his friends go to see a play. As they watch a man light the upper candles of the playhouse, the predictably inane Partridge cries out,…

Secret histories of books
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Secret histories of books

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Author
Sarah Werner

This month’s crocodile mystery was a bit more challenging than recent ones (perhaps not helped by my cryptic “suitable for April” introduction), but Aaron Pratt guessed the gist of it: the image was a detail of a page printed in…

"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": April 2013
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"What manner o' thing is your crocodile?": April 2013

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Author
The Collation

Is April the cruellest month? If so, here’s a suitably dark crocodile mystery for you to solve: your April crocodile (click to enlarge) What is this and what might we learn from it? Your speculations are welcome in the comments, and the…

The mysterious "Sem"
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The mysterious "Sem"

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Author
Erin Blake

World, meet Sem. Sem, meet the World. Looks thrilled, doesn’t he? Well, you’d be a bit jaded, too, if you’d been hanging around the Folger for over 80 years, waiting for someone to finally notice you. Self portrait of the…

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