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...

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....