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...

Delighted to see this published. It was very rewarding and worthwhile collaborating with you on this Matthew, well done 👍

A wonderfully elaborate binding for Mrs Elizabeth Colles, from the early seventeenth century. It contains three linguistic works, including Thomas Thomas’s Dictionary (Cambridge, 1610). @theulspeccoll.bsky.social Rel.d.61.2. #herbook

Holy shit, just learned about the typewriter art of Montserrat Alberich Escardívol, a Catalan typist. Using an extra wide typewriter and 180 color ribbons, she built up elaborate images from simple characters like 'm' and '.' and ';'. Here is her typewritten painting of the Cathedral of Barcelona.

Meanwhile, on Zoopla: one of Sir Walter Scott’s former properties is on the market… www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/det...

A wee bit of news. news.sky.com/story/fascin...

This talk will be recorded! It will be posted on our YouTube page once we have a chance to caption it. That can take a few weeks.

Zachary Boyd (1585–1653) was a minister, poet & @uofglasgow.bsky.social academic who lived through one of Scotland’s most turbulent times. Now his library has been brought together for the 1st time in more than 370 years by UofG's Prof Adrian Streete 📸Martin Shields gla.ac.uk/news/headlin...

MLGB is back!! Delighted that Medieval Libraries of Great Britain @bodleian.ox.ac.uk is now back online. We are also working had on plans for the next phase of the resource, enhancing & adding data & functionality. HUGE thanks to my colleagues for their hard & clever work mlgb.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

'Diasporic documents from the Gaelic Atlantic' - a one-day, in-person workshop at the University of Edinburgh on 5 September. Tuilleadh fiosrachaidh | More information 👇

We're very excited to announce that our wonderful exhibition 'Celebrating the Scottish Poet, Robert Fergusson (1750-1774)' with the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, has been turned into an online exhibition! Check it out at the link below: robert-fergusson.glasgow.ac.uk/online-exhib...

Any early modern Protestantism people know anything about the preacher William Holbrook? He preached at Paul's Cross in 1609 and a couple of his sermons (that one, published as Love's Complaint; one to the Blacksmiths and one at St Botolph's without Aldersgate) made it into print.

Although how a 17th century noblewoman shelved her books shouldn't have any bearing on how an individual chooses to arrange their personal library, it IS satisfying to see all the anti-shelving-by-colour snobs have to eat this

The new Scottish Literary Review is out on Project Muse! A Special Issue, guest edited by Gioia Angeletti and Marina Dossena, it features articles on Early Modern ScotLit, Mary, Queen of Scots, Scottish Picturebooks, migration writings and drama. You can access it here: muse.jhu.edu/issue/55288

Very exciting to see @physiciansgallery.bsky.social's The People's Dispensary published online! I loved working on this project a few years ago — sometimes I can still see Dr Andrew Duncan's handwriting when I close my eyes... www.rcpe.ac.uk/peoplesdispe...

This is so niche I can't believe I am asking, but does anyone know anyone who might be an expert in Protestantism in Italy during the Reformation? (Stranger things have happened). RTs welcome.

DR LIGHTFOOTSOOO OOWORKESOO VOL. 1 OOOOO Spotted this week @queenslibcam.bsky.social

When You Love Something, Hide It Underwater? Ireland’s Oldest Book Shrine, Found Buried in a Lake, Reemerges share.google/SwLDzqhgDTMd...

Virgin of the Immaculate Copperplate? This glowing 17th c. Spanish painting of the Virgin Mary on loan from the Hispanic Society of America to a wonderful Milwaukee Museum of Art exhibition is painted on one side and gloriously engraved on the other....

Hurrah! My next book is instantiated, and in-the-world! Library Catalogues As Data: Research, Practice, Usage. Edited with Paul Gooding and @semames.bsky.social. Proud of this one! Official publication date soon… www.facetpublishing.co.uk/page/detail/...

Relief sculpture of the 19th Century temperance campaigner William Collins on Glasgow Green, to which someone has added the remains of a hand-rolled 'cigarette'. Cont./ #glasgow #keepglasgowweird #statue #publicart #peoplemakeglasgow

#PrintedEphemera #BookHistory

*Confused historians of early modern medicine wake up to find themselves experts on current affairs*

A Tudor manuscript of a medieval poem collected by 18th antiquaries which ended up in a medieval university - a thrilling tale of medieval culture & its reception 😃 Thanks to @bobmaclean.bsky.social & the ASC team for facilitating 💫 /fin 🧵

It was the the elaborate initials (famously hiding an acrostic revealing the author's name, John Clerk of Whalley) and marginalia from later readers which occupied my attention this week 📝 2/3 🧵

A delight this week to make the aquaintance of this 1540s ms (Glasgow UL Hunter 388), the single surviving witness to the ME alliterative Romance, The Destruction of Troy (c. 1400), as part of my visiting fellowship at the University of Glasgow Library 📚 1/3 🧵

Tom Leonard’s 1984 poetry collection INTIMATE VOICES was banned by Scotland’s Central Region school libraries in 1984. The Education Committee said “There are some harmful words in it… Sometimes the naked truth has to be clothed” But Leonard had anticipated this sort of reaction… #BookWormSat 1/3

CERL - Consortium of European Research Libraries - is now on Blue Sky. Our mission is to connect European book heritage with the world. Expect to see news on rare books, manuscripts and events from our community. www.cerl.org Give us a follow!

Last month the Scottish 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and German 🇩🇪 sides of our project met in Glasgow. In our latest blog post, Alina Lange reports on a successful trip 👇 howtobook.hypotheses.org/3851

I also love this desire path comic by Chaz Hutton (instachaaz on instagram) that demonstrates that we may attempt to deny our nature, but we will always ultimately be meanderthals

📢 Clear your calendars! 🗓 On June 16th I'm hosting a day of talks on the Irish manuscripts in St Gall! The stellar line-up includes special guests from the Stiftsbibliothek. Tickets are free! Reserve here 👉 stgallmanuscripts.eventbrite.ie @historytcd.bsky.social @researchireland.ie #medievalsky

A contributor has had to withdraw from something I'm editing, late in the day. I'm looking for a sprightly 10,000 book historical words on the broad theme of 'consumers/consumption' and the period 1450-1650 (not necessarily all of it).

Do come along on May 28th to hear all about Francis Fry, his bibles, and a little bit about his chocolate...which you might even get to try🍫 The fruits of my Munby Fellowship research @theul.bsky.social @theulspeccoll.bsky.social @darwincollegecam.bsky.social

The latest offering from @howtobooks.bsky.social — howtobook.hypotheses.org/3784

A 75% staff cut proposed at the Archives and Special Collections at Bangor University eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Toadskin onlays. That’s a new one on me!

Alarm set for 5am, boots laced, Harry Potter fans elbowed out of the way, and now mooching up Glenfinnan, heading for the two Munros up here. This is the way to pass a Tuesday…

oh, Edinburgh! Please go and beam very enthusiastically at Alex Walsham when she's giving the Gifford lectures in May! She's talking about Motion & Emotion in #EarlyModern Christianity, and is bound to be brilliant. Blurb and booking here: cahss.ed.ac.uk/20242025-pro... #SkyStorians #EarlyModern

Prayer books in the Middle Ages & early modern period were used by people over generations. Personal objects, they are commonly the site where ppl left notes about important events, as here, in a late 15th- or early 16thC hand which wrote in the November calendar page , "My Moder departed to God."

Next week at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (and on zoom), speaking on a Scottish #Gaelic poet and writer active in the #Caribbean in the early 1800s, but mostly about three generations of #Bajan women in his family, from the 18th to the 20th century!