Henry Wotton, “On the sudden restraint of the Earl of Somerset”: Dazzled thus with height of place, Whilst our hopes our wits beguile, No man marks the narrow space 'Twixt a prison and a smile.

Really enjoyed this, in which @oldfortunatus.bsky.social, @lucycmunro.bsky.social, and my esteemed colleague Laurence Publicover, all wearing lightly their massive learning, talk about how much fun the Henry IV plays are. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Prospect magazine have suspended their paywall for this weekend - so if you want to read their review of Hamnet, or indeed anything else, it’s free till Feb 2. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/the-...

Very pleased that the Mrs Shakspaire letter is mentioned in the Sunday Times today!

I loved Hamnet, which was beautiful throughout, and very joyful (by the standards of films about the plague). (1/3)

he new issue of SQ is devoted to an epic bit of detective work by the late Carl T. Berkhout: wide-ranging, technically brilliant, and really alarming. Brief contributions from Gail Kern Paster, Zachary Lesser, Heather Wolfe, and me, start picking up the pieces. (1/5) academic.oup.com/sq/issue/76/4

Last BPL new acquisition of the year is a copy of the very rare gradual printed by Johann Emerich for Lucantonio Giunta in Venice in 1499. This is the largest book (by dimensions) printed during the 15th century and it required a custom-manufactured paper stock to print. 1/8

John Carey was a brilliant scholar and public intellectual, but he was also a model professional academic, and personally kind. In the 90s he ended up supervising my D Phil when no one else much fancied it, and for that I am eternally grateful.

I mean, it’s there in black and white on the internet, but I still have some doubts…

Thanks to Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group for hosting me for a zoom talk the other week on Mrs Shakespeare and binding waste! They also recorded the talk, which was kind: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9PK...

Out now! The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Constance Crompton, @raysiemens.bsky.social , Richard J. Lane, and myself And better yet? It's #openaccess! www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edi... Order hard copies here: www.routledge.com/The-Companio... Thanks to all contributors! 🎉

Chapter 6 is a bit iffy, but the rest of this collection is really very good.

Fabulous new discoveries from @kscheil.bsky.social!

Just seen this - a find with all sorts of elegant implications for Nashe. Bravo, Joseph Black. Lovely to see TN, who projects an air of brilliant improv, rechecking sources and writing corrections in his neatest handwriting. www.folger.edu/blogs/collat...

A plethora of new ODNB entries on early modern women stationers! Entries from Heidi Craig, Andrea Silva, Kirk Melnikoff, @mgyarn.bsky.social, Andreas P. Bassett, @tarallyons.bsky.social and @georginaemw.bsky.social, me, and of course from @valeriewayne.bsky.social who cooked up the whole cluster.

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/... With customary precision and elegance (how does he make it look so bloody easy?) Charles Nicholl writes about Mrs Shakspaire for the New York Review of Books.

I bought this book about 1992, probably from the 50p box of some charity bookshop. It was long before you could read anything you wanted on a phone, and I was trying to build up a library of Renaissance texts, one spectacularly dog-eared book at a time. It was very Jude the Obscure. (1/11)

Here’s one for early modernists: what is Norwich holding in this 1622 map (from Drayton’s ‘Poly-Olbion’)? Yes, Norwich had a big cathedral spire, but not two (and these maps usually indicate spires in the figure’s headdress). I’ve been tossing this about, and asking experts, for months. Stuck!

Had a lot of fun talking to Cassidy Cash www.cassidycash.com mainly about Mrs Shakspaire, with an excursion to a desert island at the end. Apologies in advance to the seagulls.

I have two things in the new Ben Jonson Journal! A short piece on the early reception of Marston’s Malcontent, and a review, open access, of Tom Harrison’s great new(ish) book on Jonson and the classics. www.euppublishing.com/toc/bjj/32/1

A long shot, but can anyone make anything out in this bit of binding waste found in a book printed in England in 1608? I can’t even tell what language it’s in.

Stunned from prolonged exposure to ideas at #RenSoc25 today. Chairing panel 5.7 tomorrow at 9 on Adaptation and Reception: specifically Bengal, Mexico, and the inside of Thomas de Quincey’s head.

Thanks to @sixteenthcgirl.bsky.social for having me on the Not Just The Tudors podcast on Shakespeare’s Women: podfollow.com/not-just-the...

📣 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...

Fabulous stuff!

Just to give a plug for this talk I'm giving, in Hereford Cathedral, on 27 June! www.herefordcathedral.org/Event/in-the...

theworld.org/segments/202... Thoughtful, connected reporting from @sbirnbaum.bsky.social for @prx.org. With contributions from @kscheil.bsky.social, me, and some chap called Stephen Greenblatt.

Really enjoyed this discussion of the Shakspaire story, not least for its headline: www.shakespearenews.com/p/shakespear...

First (pieces of a) breviary from medieval Bristol discovered, and she's a beaut! (Kath Thompson with the find, I'm just the identifier heh) Reused as the wrapper for mid-16thc accounts.

Impressive and well-researched work from Gavin Lee and @france24.com on the Shakspaire letter. youtu.be/imXFvpoD5Ns?...

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....

So I've got this article which should be coming out in the journal _Shakespeare_ any moment now, but in the meantime - Briefly, it's about a C17 letter preserved in the binding waste of a book now in Hereford Cathedral.

Bit of a teaser - I have an article on Shakespeare coming out next week which makes quite a big new biographical claim. I mean, I might call it quite big, you might call it completely incorrect. I’m actually quite nervous about this one.

Very sad to hear this. Ian was a rock-steady support to younger scholars, even those who had little to no claim on his time. I knew about many of his innovations and achievements, but the obit lists a whole load more. What a body of work.

In an infringement of copyright & total disregard for my livelihood, many of my academic publications have been taken without my consent to train AI. I stand with the @Soc_of_Authors Action. Pls sign & share this petition to protect authors' rights: www.change.org/p/protect-au...

Lots of Shakespeare merchandise around, but nice to see some William Henry Ireland merch for a change.

Pausing to admire Lady Eleanor Davies (1590–1652), prophetess. Per ODNB, “Her husband's anger at her activities prompted him to burn her prophecies. Davies responded by dressing in widow's weeds and predicting that he would die.“ Three years dressed in mourning, but she got him in the end.

Fabulous!!

Pride and Prejudice.

Guess the seminar from the whiteboard challenge.

Pressed send on a book draft.

A new essay, temporarily accessible for free. It is highly readable, intellectually generous, and genuinely, fascinatingly new. Given its author, this isn’t really a surprise.

A good day for lovers of early modern drama!

Without downloading any new pics, what’s your energy going into 2025?

This is new to me, and very silly, and delightful.

Oh my gosh, do yourselves a favour and read this. It’s gripping.

Hello new friends! Can I share a book with you? This is a (battered) Volume I of Samuel Johnson’s Works of the English Poets (1779). I’d like, purely out of nosiness, to know who the original owner was.

Misha Teramura, @matthewsteggle.bsky.social & I wrote a thing for The Conversation about Alice Mustian, who in 1614 wrote and produced a play about her neighbour’s adulterous affair: theconversation.com/in-1614-a-mo...

Our article is out! Open-access at RES. Co-written by Misha Teramura, @dnmcinnis, and me in shifts around the clock. It was a lot of fun to do. academic.oup.com/res/advance-... (1/4)