And day 2 of #BuiltWithBooks was also a joy (so much so that I’ve spent most of today recovering from the excitement!). Thank you to all our speakers and attendees for making it a huge success - cake and merch for the win, but nothing beats a room full of interesting, generous book historians.

And what an EXCELLENT paper it was - so excited to play with the tools and pester you with questions about using all the data (apologies in advance…)

Such a fantastic first day at our @livesandletters.bsky.social Built with Books symposium. Heading home to finish my paper (😅) full of ideas and excited for day two. #BuiltWithBooks #EarlyModern #BookHistory

apparently my book comes out in September, wow, preorder it for all your library and intellectual history needs, stay for the section on Paradise Lost and John Ray's herbals, or the story of George Psalmanazar, my favourite early modern scammer www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

📣 Exciting Bedwell news 📣 I’m thrilled to have assisted with a new exhibition at Bruce Castle Museum, ‘Getting the Measure of William Bedwell: Maths, Measurement and the Arabic World’. Top tip: pair your visit with a walk around the corner to see his church for full WB/early modern Tottenham vibes.

hello. if you work at a university please ask your library to buy my book. it is all about books and libraries and also plants, museums, the Royal Society, and the ways we learn. I think it will be interesting to lots of people, hopefully. thank you www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

Signalboosting this CFP!

Sorry, kids. Prepare to be SHOCKED and OFFENDED by the scarcity of Arabic books in sixteenth-century England.

Can anyone with much better Arabic palaeography skills than me transcribe this? It is the end of a note written by a Moroccan in a European album amicorum. I’m trying to work out if the name we have for the person who wrote it comes from the inscription itself or another source, but struggling…

Bullying, long hours and no jobs: Inside the TV industry's mental health crisis - with over 50% of the tv industy out of work, how are the government planning on supporting it? inews.co.uk/culture/tele...

(you have to be sixteen or older to use the Library of Congress' reading rooms)

My conference tattoo may be fading, but the research, conversations and unadulterated geekery of FEATHERS’ Scribes and Inky Fingerprints will be with me for quite some time. If you weren’t here I’m afraid you really did miss out…

In two weeks' time! Join us in the evening of 19 May for an exciting conversation about 'changing the record: how people use(d) paperwork to make their world. Free tickets: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/changing-t... #YayArchives #SkyStorians #HistArchives

If someone would like to pay me to move to Leiden that would be delightful, thank you

Very excited to be en route to Leiden to talk about Arabic correspondence in England (obviously feat. William Bedwell) at the FEATHERS conference. Less excited at being stationary on the tarmac at Stansted for longer than the journey will take…

Come and join us at @livesandletters.bsky.social to talk about #EarlyModern libraries! Two weeks to get your abstracts in! Check the website for full details, incl. how PhDs and ECRs can apply for funding to attend…

Do pop along tomorrow for our event at 5 on Muslim ambassadors: www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

Every Richard Field binding now a possible Shakespeare household archive? Yes please!

It’s me! I’m the expert! Had lots of fun writing this piece on The White Lotus and Shakespeare. Please read and share! #Shakespeare #TheWhiteLotus

“At this point, many librarians have done every single thing they can to save things.”

What ethical responsibilities do we bear when we write about war? This is one of the questions we’re posing in our June colloquium on early modern war narratives. CFP here and the deadline is 11th April! Please share widely and consider submitting an abstract! kingsearlymodern.co.uk/events/lamen...

They did it. They terminated my NEH grant. Their letter went to my junk mail. This is an active grant that would have finished on June 30. “Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government” They are so afraid of us.

I was lucky enough to spend much of last year surveying Arabic manuscripts at the @nationaltrust.bsky.social and @britishlibrary.bsky.social, tracing the provenance of individual items and identifying trends across the collections. If you’d like to read more there’s a link to my report below!

We’re having a symposium at @livesandletters.bsky.social! Come and geek out with us over early modern libraries and the books that filled them. Abstracts due May 16th, full details here www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of... #bookhistory #earlymodern

You know you’ve found your people when a stranger pulls a rare book out of their bag to compare with your homemade tote because both title pages feature the same printer’s device #RenSA25

Home after a truly fantastic #RenSA25. Loved sharing my own work (once the paper was finished 😅), saw so much stimulating research and discussion, and loved Boston. But the company of amazing ECR pals is what really made it a really special trip. Fugit hora when you’re having fun ❤️

‘Although opium was difficult to cultivate and process, it was the perfect merchandise for maritime trade: it was compact and light, and stable enough to travel long distances in ships’ holds.’ Nandini Das (@rentravailer.bsky.social) on the history of opium: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Last call for this piece about the entangled histories of English and French and the people who speak them.

Happy World Book Day from my current favourite, a manuscript Qur’an acquired in Surat, in the hefty English binding of Sir Simonds d’Ewes (1602-1650)

‘The story of Anglo-French is the story of a time when the understandings of language and nation were wholly different to our own.’ @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social on the French influence on English: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I don’t mean to say that historical fiction can’t be criticized in terms of its presentation of history. But I think it’s a serious problem that far more public ink goes to critiquing novelists’ source work or directors’ casting decisions than the gutting of libraries, archives and history programs.

So pleased I finally made it to the fantastic Endless Stories exhibition at Cambridge UL today. Slightly off topic but - aside from a couple of Bedwell MSS - this doodle study of a cat was a real highlight…

Is @theulspeccoll.bsky.social blog down for anyone else this afternoon or is it just me?

Today I put a bird feeder *with camera* in our garden and I think it might be the best money I’ve ever spent. I’ve christened it ‘Peck a Manger’ and I apologise in advance if you don’t like birds because this will now be 90% of my social media content… 🐦‍⬛

My favourite time of the year to do research visits is November. It’s cold and crisp and festive. Today for work I visited Ely Cathedral and the Stained Glass Museum. Truly a doorway to another world!

Just caught up on this and it’s an absolute must-listen. So exciting to see #EarlyModern historical research being used to tell such an urgent, current story 👏

My absolute favourite thing in the V&A. Close second is the façade of Paul Pindar’s house, built in 1600 and demolished in the 1890s

I think it’s time to introduce Bluesky to my favourite #EarlyModern person, William Bedwell. If you wanted to learn Arabic in England 400 years ago you would head to his vicarage in Tottenham. It was demolished in the 1800s but you can still see where it stood today, near White Hart Lane Station 🔎

It's happening: my ERC Consolidator project 🪶#FEATHERS🪶is organising a 3-day international conference on early modern scribal culture & manuscript production at @unileiden.bsky.social on 7-9 May 2025. See Call for Papers (deadline for abstracts 20 Dec): student.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...

Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke is twenty two years old, a member of NZ parliament and just objected to a terrible bill using the haka. Her defiance in the face of right wing shenanigans is inspiring.

Yay for hybrid conferences! #bookhistory 🗃️

Excited to see so many early modernists joining from the old place, hoorah! If you don’t know me from there I’m Sam, PhDing at UCL where I’m looking at English encounters with the Arabic language pre-1635. When not thinking about marginalia and manuscripts I’m generally waiting on my parrot, Katie.

Listen out for The Long View tomorrow (Tuesday) at 9am on BBC Radio 4! www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

I’m thrilled to have my name alongside @annalujz.bsky.social in Dee’s library list, and I cannot emphasise enough that she has done all the real work whereas I just happened to wander over in the Bodleian with uncanny timing! Read more about the book in Anna’s blog post: ebdo.org.uk/2024/09/12/n...

I was so excited to share this that I forgot the key information? New John Dee book identification! probs given to the Bodleian in 1603! here's a blog post!

Your periodic reminder that there is a monthly gathering at a vaguely historical pub in London of PhDs & ECRs & sometimes others, who (mostly) do early modern studies. Everyone is welcome. Send me a DM to join, especially if you are starting out on your academic journey or new to London #EarlyModern

@tropy.bsky.social hello! I’m having an issue where exporting selections of an image is producing a slightly cropped version of the image with a lot of black space, and I’m having to then crop each new image file to rectify it. Is this a known problem/is there a fix? Many thanks!

Feeling joyfully smug about my latest Vinted bargain #BookHistory

This is a list of some #earlymodern research centres and organisations we could already find. Are there any others around here already? bsky.app/profile/did:...

I’m very much looking forward to the other papers on my panel, which is full of early modern goodness. I’ll be talking about connections and parallels between the early Bodleian library and the Virginia Company in the early 1600s. #SHARP2024