Today on the blog: a fascinating discussion by @franceswolfreston.bsky.social on a book on marriage and choosing a wife owned by Elizabeth Cromwell, a cousin of Oliver Cromwell earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/08/04/e... #HerBook #EarlyModern

Just read (+ blurbed) the galleys of this book! It's 🌟🎉🪴🔥💕!! A thrilling, moving, heartening text, given shape through @dorothyjberry.bsky.social's + @wehere.bsky.social's clever play on bibliographic + bureaucratic form. Such a ✨ mix of protocol + improvisation. Can't wait to see this out in the 🌏

A fantastic book history project!

And ... voila! Thanks again to my sharp-eyed copyeditor, and to @joshuajfriedman.com and @bcdreyer.social! Just more evidence that social media can be a force for good (grammar) ...

Wow, is the spine still intact?!! Incredible!

This is what I’m talkin’ about!! Thick, stout, and chonky!!

Early Modern Biblionerds: I’m looking for some thick books before 1700. what is the longest book (in pages, not words) printed before 1700? what about in quarto format?

#Bees 🐝 1744 book! "Melisselogia: Or, the Female Monarchy..." printed in London for author John Thorley. 4 plates of illustrations & 10 chapters covering everything bees! Catalog: bit.ly/melisselogia... #Pollinators #18thCentury #NatureSky #IllustratedBooks #NaturalHistory #nature #RareBooks

The real reason academic conferences exist is that after you have marinated your brain in hundreds of books on a single field of study for 10+ years there are only so many people you can speak coherent sentences to, and it’s a pleasure to have them all in one place 😅

Booklist preserved from 3rd century Memphis (P. Petropol. 13). Kind of cool to see that they had a copy of Aristotle's "Athenaion Politeia" (line 12)! (From Wilcken "Chrestomathie" n. 155)

‘As J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, she criss-crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of rare manuscripts to add to his collection, outbidding and outsmarting rivals wherever she went.’ Francesca Wade on Belle da Costa Greene: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

What an accomplishment! Amazing work here on Alice Thornton!

@serenadyer.bsky.social & I are thrilled to announce that our edited book is out now! It focuses on how processes of making, experimenting, experiencing, & reconstructing illuminate understandings around manual labour & material life. Overview 🧵 on 📕 chapters & our contributors! 👇

In 1671, Rachel (Fane) Bouchier, the Countess of Bath, purchased £200 of books for the library at @tcddublin.bsky.social The books were housed together and known as “The Countess of Bath’s Library.” This week I reconstructed the bequest, with the help of the amazing TCD librarians.

📢WILLS TRANSCRIBATHON KLAXON📢 Join us on Thursday 24 July to transcribe wills and go behind the scenes of the wills project! In person and on Zoom - full details & registration here: willstranscribathon.eventbrite.com #EarlyModern 🗃️ #transcription @leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social

So many baby horses in Ireland this time of year! I’m in love 😍

This symposium looks fabulous!

📣 CFP: Shakespeare Quarterly special issue Shakespeare’s Twenty-First Century / The Twenty-First Century’s Shakespeare This will be Vanessa I. Corredera, Arthur L. Little, Jr. and my first issue as Editors! Please submit your finest! More info: networks.h-net.org/group/announ...

I wrote about the library of Katherine Blount’s daughter, Catharina (Blount) Freman. Check it out below:

Trolley #2 complete! The Countess of Bath, Rachel (Fane) Bourchier purchased books for Trinity Dublin College in 1671. One was Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiocus (1654), a fascinating (albeit flawed) work of orientalist scholarship.

Trolley #1. I’m at Trinity Dublin for the next two weeks to reconstruct the Countess of Bath’s library. Thanks to the library staff for helping make this happen. Now, back to work— there are more than a hundred volumes to examine. Happy days ahead.

I’m honored to be part of this incredible lineup. See you in Dublin!

Today on the blog: a post by Joe Black on a copy of Robert Hill's popular Pathway to Piety in which multiple women have written their name and one used it to record some sad family history earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/06/06/r... #EarlyModern #HerBook

Read about the fabulously named “Elizabeth Skippe” and her book below.

I wrote a thing about a book owned by Bathsua Reginald Makin that I found in @bodleianlibraries.bsky.social whilst working on their early records. earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/05/07/h... Thanks to @martinevanelk.bsky.social and @tarallyons.bsky.social for hosting #herbook

Complete ream wrapper used to bound a late 18th-century Boston carpentry account book. This would have been the outer packaging for a ream of imported Dutch paper.

CFP Reminder: Marginalia and the Early Modern Woman Writer, 1500-1700 #medieval #earlymodern www.anzamems.org/?p=...

Delighted to say that my article, "The Shakspaires of Trinity Lane: A Possible Shakespeare Life-Record" is now fully published and open-access! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Women’s libraries— one name at a time!

First Talk from the new project is in the books!

🔥🔥🔥

Picture embroidered by Martha Hollis, England, 1660. Aged 10. (Victoria & Albert Museum, London)

Does anyone know when JISC LibHub might be back up and working again?

In the 1790s a London woman named Eliza Denyer developed a modest reputation as a restorer of medieval manuscripts. She was forgotten by scholars and, in one case, her restorations were deliberately replaced by a man’s. I recovered her story & tracked all her known work here: tinyurl.com/2ktztx2e

I’ve now gathered five books from the Carmelite convent #Elzendaal in #Boxmeer, all 17th-century devotional works. Their bindings, inscriptions, and ownership marks reveal a deep history of monastic reading and spiritual life. A fascinating glimpse into a cloistered past! #herbook #bookhistory

Today on the blog, a rich post by @michelinewhite.bsky.social on a fascinating copy of the romance Argenis by John Barclay, owned by three different generations of early modern Scottish women buff.ly/GJYrHCa #EarlyModern #HerBook

Tiny vellum-bound books in the Egerton Traveling Library (1615), likely gifted to Thomas Egerton by William Hakewill.

Today on the blog: another wonderful post by Joe Black about an entertaining sermon on marriage, joint male/female early modern ownership, and a connection to Mary Wroth https://buff.ly/41kAMlT #EarlyModern #HerBook

There are literally hundreds of research projects here at UIUC being destroyed by the cuts to the NSF, NIH, NIFA, USAID. It’s an incomprehensible waste of scientific progress and human capital.

#RareBooks types, have you ever seen paper decorating like this before? It's definitely not tree calf: it's definitely some sort of paint or ink on paper. The ink is very shiny. The overall effect is very purple. I've never seen the like. 📚 Complete book here: archive.org/details/b285...

Dorothy B. Porter changed libraries 💜 The Dewey Decimal System used to only have two classifications for Black people: 325 (colonization) & 326 (slavery). Each book by a Black person was put into one of these classifications. A book of poetry? Classified as colonization. Enter Dorothy B. Porter 🧵

Congratulations @namrao.bsky.social! Your article is brilliant!

Thank you! Such an honour to work with ELR and to receive this award alongside @tarallyons.bsky.social!

Today on the blog: another wonderfully researched post by Joe Black on a book by Richard Allestree (always popular with women readers) that was handed down between women and features interesting ownership marks and binding https://buff.ly/3EpJohU #HerBook #EarlyModern

❗️CFP for the 3rd annual (!!) Queer Bibliography symposium in Newcastle & on Zoom! The organizers have worked so hard, and I’m honored to be on the planning committee. 📚 full cfp: bit.ly/QueerBiblio2... 📁 submission form: bit.ly/QB2025Propos... This call will close Fri 31 Jan 2025. Share & submit!

Rich People: Can you start $$endowing$$ some faculty positions in Literature, Gender Studies, History, all the humanities?? Start w/ state uni’s that provide social mobility for first gen students. Please, while people still know why “books” exist?? 🙏🏻

I’m writing a conference paper on the first Duke of Ormonde’s library and realizing how many Irish secondary sources are not available in US libraries.😩

Next time you are on EEBO or ECCO and see a thumbprint in the corner, remember it is likely the hands of women digitizing books in London basements during the blitz. They didnt know if the books would survive.

Illinois State University's Special Collections - Circus Wardrobe Collection open for research 📜 Announcement: news.illinoisstate.edu/2025/01/miln... And, since I love this kind of thing - How they define Special Collections is on their page here: library.illinoisstate.edu/services/spe...