Secret Letter Detailing Late Medieval Britain Fully Decoded www.medievalists.net/2026/04/secr... #history #medieval #England #Scotland

It seems that books are a bit like buses... 'Fat Bodies in Early Modern Europe' edited by Christine Ott, @jillburke.bsky.social and me is out now!! #EarlyModern Also including contributions from Alex Pyrges, Andrea Baldan, @scarlettgauthor.bsky.social, Pablo García Piñar, and Roberta Colbertaldo

"Archaeologists stunned to find copy of Homer’s Iliad inside ancient Egyptian mummy" www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

We are now accepting submissions for the Mitchell Prize for research on British serials! 📖🏆 Awarded every three years, the prize brings a cash award 💵of $1,000 and a year’s membership in the Society. Link to learn more and submit in bio 🔗

A feather in the opening of an incunable. Would be very interested to know what bird this came from.

Some abject book handling here from Isidore. Good grief man, put down the crook. Dear dear

Congratulations to the editors and all who contributed to this long-awaited first vol (2 pts) of the History of the Book in Scotland! Great achievement. Proud to be included on Esther Inglis in pt.2, with her portrait highlighting the cover of pt.1. #bookhistory @edinburghup.bsky.social

The Atlas of Early Printing has a new URL at the Folger. 📜 #BookHistory atlas.folger.edu

Brown University is home to George Orwell's original manuscript of 1984. Most of it is marked up heavily in Orwell's hand-writing but this untouched page caught my eye.

📢Job alert! We’re looking for 3 new full-time graduate trainee Archives & Special Collections Assistants to join our innovative, user-focused engagement team. See more details and apply: www.jobs.gla.ac.uk/job/archives... 🗓️Closing date: 16 April 2026

Fully-funded three-year PhD Scholarship: Living with Print in the Eighteenth Century Based at @sydney.edu.au (with Nicola Parsons) and @glasgow.ac.uk (with me), working with collections in Australia and Scotland. Deadline April 21st - please circulate! www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships...

The wonderful Alexandra Plane was the recipient of the Alasdair Ross Prize 2024. She has produced a blog post about how the funds helped support her archival research into 16th century royal book traders. Read all about it here: scottishhistorysociety.com?p=1323

Job opportunity with manuscripts and early printed books! Librarian at Lincoln Cathedral – Cathedral Library £43,722 - Full time applicaiton DL: 14 April 2026 www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQX901/l...

St. Cuthbert's Day has come round again and I'm very happy to be able to update last year's post with the link to the St. Cuthbert Gospel, which is back online. Catalogue entry here searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/032-... with link to the digitized MS from there. ⚓ @blmedieval.bsky.social

CONGRATULATIONS 🎉 to the winner of our Digital Prize 2026: Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online (ECLO). The project is the result of a 5yr AHRC-funded project on the role of books in social, cultural & political change across the #18thC Atlantic. www.liverpool.ac.uk/history/rese... #skystorians 🗃️

wrote a short blog about one of my favourite images in the book - a figure of 'true' and 'feigned' ginger, and what it might mean for a plant to be false. cambridgeblog.org/2026/03/trea...

Some delights, even. No Dwights were present AFAIK

Some Dwight’s from today’s class @uofglasgowasc.bsky.social Cross-Cultural Artistic Encounters in the Mediterranean, 1200-1700 HISTART5164 led by Anthi Andronikou. A 19c Ethiopic talisman scroll (an angel) and details from a cracking Andalusian Qur’an.

Some Dwight’s from today’s class @uofglasgowasc.bsky.social Cross-Cultural Artistic Encounters in the Mediterranean, 1200-1700 HISTART5164 led by Anthi Andronikou. A 19c Ethiopic talisman scroll (an angel) and details from a cracking Andalusian Qur’an.

In 1787, Robert Burns acquired a diamond-tipped pen which he used to inscribe poems on windows & chimney-pieces across Scotland. “I Murder Hate” is Burns’s version of “make love, not war” #graffiti, & was etched into a window at the Globe Tavern, Dumfries #WyrdWednesday #C18 #poem #poetry

Something nasty on the bookshelf: my review of @tanyakirk.bsky.social's collection of stories about books and libraries for @blpublishing.bsky.social, ‘The Haunted Library’ drfrancisyoung.com/2026/03/04/s... 📚👻

Calling all #UofG students! There is less than 1 week to apply for the David Murray Book Collecting Prize! £500 will be awarded to the student with the best collection of books or printed materials 📘📕📙 To find out more and apply, go to www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/li....

We all slip. In 1591, so did 1 of Mynken Liefrinck’s workmen quite literally. While printing engravings for this edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses published by Jan I Moretus, a stray paper slip seems to have been left between plate & sheet. Its edge blocked ink, leaving a defined unprinted corner.

Pleasingly meta to find some printed binding waste with a whole page of definitions of the word bind/binding. In a medical work by Leonart Fuchs, printed at Lyons in 1550 & bequeathed to @theulspeccoll.bsky.social in 1591 by Thomas Lorkyn, Regius Professor of Physic. N*.13.49(G).

The “messy” course returns to London’s palaeography summer school, 8-12 June. A chance to make your own medieval manuscript. Places are limited so book now (tell your friends)! #medievalsky taught by the amazing @saracharles.bsky.social @stevelawesarts.bsky.social 👇🎨🫟 palaeography.uk/study/short-...

Call for applications! We are looking for a small press to take up a temporary residency at UCL! £5,000 to spend flexibly, an opportunity to work with outstanding collections & collaborate with brilliant students and staff! blogs.ucl.ac.uk/special-coll...

TCD Library is recruiting a Senior Bibliographer to help catalogue the Fagel Collection! This is a fabulous professional opportunity to work on one of Europe's great early modern private libraries. Closing 10 March at noon. Full details available at www.tcd.ie/hr/vacancies

Love opening up a box or two in the stacks to see what's inside and found two absolute treasures today. First up, a poor ruinous mid-sixteenth century primer which alas has not yet been mended, and doesn't appear in the catalogue. @theulspeccoll.bsky.social 1/2

Shoutout to my amazing colleagues at Cambridge & Birmingham on the 'Small Performances' project into John Baskerville's typographic punches - today is released a @camdiglib.bsky.social collection of imagery of the punches. Check it out! cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/...

Puzzle Binding! Tricky! These are almost as rare as hen's teeth, and we just... Had One??? And, it includes HOW Many Books? (Five from Germany c. 1601 and a blank one at last count...) #Vexierbuch #DosADos @newberrylibrary.bsky.social (Case C 823 .966)

Owning a printing office comes in handy when your family library needs labels for the books: just print the labels with the monogram on paper first, then paste it onto the spines! #bookhistory #earlymodern #rarebooks 📚💙📜

My new book, An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class, is now listed in Verso's trade catalogue for 2026. You can find it here: versobooks.com/en-gb/pages/...

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust A mountain down and down. Between my feet a loch shines in the brown, Its silver paper crinkled and edged with rust… —Norman MacCaig, “Climbing Suilven” from BETWEEN MOUNTAIN AND SEA: Poems From Assynt (Birlinn, 2018) #poetry birlinn.co.uk/product/betw...

This is my new book (26/026). It's the 1st time in years that I'll be published as 'Shona' rather than 'S.G.'and I am very happy to be reclaiming my name. It's about a reading society formed in a northern Scottish town in the 1830s. Drama ensues. (My mother-in-law crocheted the shawl 🧶)

Book launch: The Cromarty Library Circle 25 Feb, Dunkeld: £5 @shonamaclean.bsky.social launches her latest novel, THE CROMARTY LIBRARY CIRCLE: a Scottish town on the cusp of change & the townspeople whose lives will be irrevocably altered over one tumultuous year www.culturepk.org.uk/event/an-eve...

New our blog, @jamesafox.bsky.social on Robert Burns and the how-to of barrel gauging 📏🛢📖🍺 howtobook.hypotheses.org/5697 #bookhistory #robertburns #taxes

Applications for our rare books librarian position at the University of Arizona are open until Feb 9 (next week) We have a fab diverse collection, great people to work with, and amazing Mexican food. arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree... I'm not on the search, please feel free to reach out w qs!

First London Palaeography Seminar of 2026 coming up! Eyal Poleg, no less, speaking on 'The Science of Erasures' - Tuesday 3rd February, 5:30pm Senate House and online. To learn more and to register: ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

This year's Stevenson Lecture will examine the library assembled at Auchincruive House in Ayr by Glasgow merchant Richard Oswald (c.1705–1784) — in light of Oswald’s extensive profits from the transatlantic slave trade. 📅 25 Feb, 6pm 📍 Senate House, London This event is free, booking is required.

The most exciting #BookHistory talk of the season is coming up next week! Join us @ransomcenter.bsky.social or online as Ann Blair delivers the 2026 Pforzheimer lecture. This talk has Erasmus, Gessner, and volumes both large &small! Learn more: www.eventbrite.com/e/pforzheime... #booksky 🗃️📜📚

Back to work! Happy New Year, all!

On reading both sides of a piece of paper: a mini essay adamsmyth.substack.com/p/bothsidesi...

“The tell isn’t that fake citations look wrong. It’s that they look too right. Too convenient. Too perfectly aligned with whatever point the AI is making“ open.substack.com/pub/cardcata...

Books = amazing tech. Here's an offertory book recording donations on shabbat. To heed the prohibition on writing during sabbath the page has a grid with holes that correspond to an amount. Thread goes thru the hole pledged; when paid, thread comes out. jewishmuseum.org.uk/50-objects/c...

Palaeographers: you definitely should consider applying to this illustrious fund:

Following on from his article on Peter McLagan, Scotland's first Black MP, Dr Martin Spychal has explored the life of his father, Peter McLagan senior, and his ownership of enslaved people in Demerara (modern-day Guyana): historyofparliament.com/2025/12/11/p...

"There seems a love in hair, though it be dead. It is the gentlest, yet the strongest, thread of our frail plant..." -Leigh Hunt, "On a Lock of Milton's Hair" (The author of #ParadiseLost was born #OnThisDay in 1608.) (More on Hunt's hair collection: sites.utexas.edu/ransomcenter...) #poetry 🗃️📜

A Book Peddler Master of the Canesso Peddler ca. 1670–90 (Met Museum)

This is such a sad story! An important collection that had been sent for digitisation (though why from Kent to Scotland, I'm not sure) 📜 www.bbc.com/news/article...