The Collation

Research and Exploration at the Folger

I have sent you a Privy Seal…

October 6, 2016 | By Sarah Powell and Heather Wolfe

The answer to last week’s crocodile mystery? As Jan Kellett correctly pointed out in her comment to the October Crocodile Mystery, the red-orange concentric circles in this image are an “offset mark made by a seal.” The mark was made by the waxy residue and impression from a privy seal which was once enclosed within a letter. Early modern letters often mention things enclosed (another letter, seeds, a lock of hair, a recipe, a poem) but rarely do we see the proof of such an enclosure.… Continue Reading

Faire Europe: Ortelius, Mercator, and the continents

September 22, 2016 | By Abbie Weinberg

Maps, today, are ubiquitous. We have them in our phones, on our public transit, on walls and signs everywhere you turn. Many people learn to read and interpret them from an early age. Conventions that we don’t even know are conventions guide our understanding of maps. Of course, this wasn’t always the case. For people in the 16th and 17th centuries, geography and cartography were rapidly changing and expanding fields, as European knowledge of other parts of the world grew by leaps and bounds.… Continue Reading

A Recipe’s Place is in the Classroom

September 13, 2016 | By Amanda Herbert

The Folger Shakespeare Library is many things: an internationally-renowned research library, a museum, a performance space, a center for innovative digital initiatives, and home to some of the best air conditioning on Capitol Hill (not something to be overlooked during our sticky Washington, D.C. summers). But it’s also a classroom, or even many different kinds of classrooms: education is central to the Folger mission, and every year the Folger offers hundreds of programs designed for all kinds of classrooms, from bright, lively elementary-school homerooms to spare, echoing college lecture halls, and from traditional school-houses filled with desks and chalkboards, to pioneering online learning communities populated by students from around the world.… Continue Reading

“To benefit the suffering Belgians”

September 6, 2016 | By Sarah Hovde

As several readers quickly guessed, last week’s crocodile image was a photograph of a Russian edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The “ghost” type in the image is due to a glassine (translucent paper) jacket around the volume, which obscures the printed text of the cardboard cover below. This edition was translated by Modest Tchaikovsky (dramatist, librettist, and brother of the Romantic composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky), and published in 1914 by I.… Continue Reading

Uncut, unopened, untrimmed, uh-oh

August 23, 2016 | By Erin Blake

Do you despair when when you hear “decimate” used to describe a reduction of more than ten percent? Does seeing the caption “Big Ben” on a souvenir postcard showing a London clock tower rather than the largest bell within it make you cringe? If so, heed this warning: never use the phrase “uncut leaves” when describing a book. Even though you know that you’re using it with precision, and even though I know that you know, using it at all keeps a confusing phrase in circulation.… Continue Reading

Introducing A Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama

August 18, 2016 | By Elizabeth Williamson and Meaghan J. Brown

You know your Shakespeare, but who else was writing for the early modern stage? What did drama look like between 1576 to 1642? How long did plays take to reach print? What playing companies appeared on the title page? Who printed drama? Last month, the Folger Institute launched A Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama, the Folger’s NEH-funded hub for early modern drama.… Continue Reading

Q & A: Amanda Herbert, Assistant Director for Fellowships Program, Folger Institute

August 16, 2016 | By The Collation

Amanda Herbert recently became an Assistant Director at the Folger Institute, where she directs each aspect of the Folger fellowships program, from managing the applications process to fostering a sense of scholarly community. As part of the Folger Institute team, she’s also involved in current and future digital humanities (DH) initiatives. She has a PhD in history and her first book, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain (Yale University Press, 2014), won the Best Book prize from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.… Continue Reading

Honing transcriptions with algorithms and acumen

August 9, 2016 | By Paul Dingman

A question I often hear from paleographers who contribute transcriptions to Early Modern Manuscripts Online (or EMMO) is: What are you going to do with all these transcriptions? It’s a good question—central to the whole project, actually—but it’s also a complicated one. The short answer I usually give goes something like this: We aim to gather multiple independent transcriptions for each digitized page and compare them to create an aggregate transcription which an expert paleographer then checks over for accuracy.… Continue Reading