Is your reading boring you? Just turn your book’s sewing cords into a face! In a medical work by Julien le Paulmier, printed at Paris in 1578, and in 1582 bought by Henry Bust (a fellow of Magdalen College Oxford) from the Oxford bookseller Richard Garbrand. Now @theulspeccoll.bsky.social K.14.48.

Today I heard about an interesting book on a public radio station show, then when I got home I went to the website for my local public library and requested it. I'll have it tomorrow for free. This is precious. We must protect this.

This week over 100,000 ALCS members will receive their share of £34m. Let's celebrate the value of human creativity, something that isn't going anywhere 💡📖🌳

It's World Bear Day, so here's a bear who's had it with all this. #MosaicMonday

Hive mind question... Does anyone recognise the location on Bloomsbury Street, London in this painting? Fwiw I *think* it's looking north from the junction with New Oxford Street but For Reasons that might be wishful thinking on my part. I've already checked the bomb damage maps.

Smollett: Guys, I've cracked the code for writing dialogue about technical stuff: you just copy the bit you need from non-fiction, et voila!

I think someone did exactly this to the BL’s original copy

Sprung! Twice in the year, around the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the sunrise shines right along Ingram Street, turning the Iron Duke, his steed, Copenhagen, and even his traffic cone hat into a shadowy work of art against the great doors of GoMA. Picture: u/Hoyerman68

✨Excited to be co-organising the conference 'Beyond Bobadilla: Greek Learning and Religion in Early Modern Europe, 16th-17thc.' with @hlamers.bsky.social 📍Norwegian Institute, Rome 📆27-28 May 2027 👉Please submit 250-word paper proposals by 1 December 2026 👇See below for further information!

chip shops rejoice

A research query for the #herbook community. I'm working on a short piece about a law book with a girl's signature ("her book!") -- an extension of a blog post. Anyone w other examples of early modern woman's provenance on law books? Esp British/ British American? karinwulf.com/tidbits/abig...

The bursary of £1,700 will be awarded to a mid-career historian working on 17th-century British history who wishes to make use of the IHR’s library collections. #Skystorians

Would watch

All my library holds came in at once so now I have to quit my job to read.

The Vernal Equinox means that it's time to rename the folder on my desktop that contains thousands of unread pdfs from "Winter Reading" to "Spring Reading". This is how I mark the passing of the seasons.

OpenClaw gets one of those alarming school reports you see in future biographies

Où sont passés les livres de Marc Bloch? Une histoire de pratiques savantes, de spoliation nazie, de restitution partielle, brièvement restituée dans cette infographie pour l’exposition @bis-sorbonne.bsky.social

I would LOVE to see you at the Oxford Literary Festival on Sunday! I'm really looking forward to talking to Lucy Thynne, Deputy Literary Editor of The Telegraph and writer of their Poem of the Week column, about #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems. Info: oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-e...

And I thought he was buried in East Coker

We did it. We defeated Mandelbrot

Covid blue skies this morning

You can pre-order, unbelievably. Oct. 20! yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Vogons

Current historian modes: 1. Modernists. This is allllll unprecedented. Despair. 2. Early modernists. So we’re back to the regular. Despair.

All across the land, cries of ‘that’s not a double elephantine!’

Some more reading in art. Not sure that the Jagger GWR memorial needs the lighting effect. Paddington maybe.

Here's a thread of #books I've recently got hold of. I'm obsessed with zoology, and all are animal books. We start with Des Thompson and Ingvar Byrkjedal's Shorebirds of 2001. On first glance, it looks like one of those photo-themed bird books that contain minimal info, but...

Spring in bounding in

Surprisingly generous spoils at the Gulp Fiction quiz

A mystery I didn't know I needed: Who was REALLY the keeper of George II's pheasants and how did somebody get "ostriches" added to (or, subtracted from) said keeper's duties?!

‘one of the few spots in the nation’s capital that could wrestle its northern counterpart, the formidable New York Public Library, into submission.’ giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... A whirlwind guide to Washington’s Library of Congress

19th century cardboard secret code device klaxon! are you an MA or PhD student looking to get experience sharing archive wonders with broader public/children? apply now (7 year old me is absolutely making cardboard secret code devices all summer)

The Afterlives of John Dee's Books ✨ Five surviving volumes from the library of John Dee, once part of the largest private collection in Elizabethan England, are now held at Chetham’s Library. Discover the afterlives of John Dee's books in our blog ➡️ library.chethams.com/blog/the-aft...

👇This is later on this afternoon! Still some time to register (or DM me for a link 😉)

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... ‘Men retire, women get fired’ — the quiet crisis gripping museums

MSS guardian

- Indexing community – international too, and overseas conferences - Book launches are fun and you get to meet authors – Dennis Duncan, Nick Cave, Alan Partridge are personal highlights. #MetaFutures

R3 Evensong includes Nico Muhly's To Shutt Up This Circle, Donne fans www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... (from A Sermon of Valediction at my going into Germany, at Lincolns-Inne, April 18, 1619)

News! EHR is hosting a free one-day symposium at St John's College, Oxford, on Friday 17 April, 10-6, on the theme 'When there are no sources'. Further details and how to sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/when-there...

#earlymodern #skystorians #reformazing #classicalreception

It's 500 years since the first text printed in Yiddish, and one of our amazing grad students is hosting a symposium this October to mark the date: please forward the CFP to Yiddishists, book historians, typography nerds, and anyone you think might be up for this! medieval.ox.ac.uk/500-years-of...

Where would we all be without Japanese paper? giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Water, Japanese paper and a vacuum cleaner — the secrets of restoring Michelangelo’s Last Judgment

For International Woman’s Day, a thread.

Good morning. Today I’m considering printing a series of defunct political slogans on T-shirts. I mean *really* defunct. Old, but - in their moment - passionately felt. “Give us back our eleven days“ type of thing.

As someone who watched the careful stewardship of grants over many years, the lack of care and the dismissal of the hard work of scholars and NEH program staff described here is devastating and shameful. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...

Book cushion piece no. 4.

Pop up exhibition for staff; and enjoying hearing their insights on the various volumes

Have a lovely day, everyone.