Renaissance Paleography in England (skills course)

For more past programming from the Folger Institute, please see the article Folger Institute scholarly programs archive.

This was a fall semester skills course held in 2005, 2004, 2002, 2001, 2000, and 1999. The 2005 seminar was led by Heather Wolfe, while prior seminars were led by Laetitia Yeandle.

This skills course was designed to provide an introduction to English handwriting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to introduce participants to a wide range of documents of historical and literary interest from the manuscript collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library. These included correspondence, literary works, accounts, inventories, wills, and deeds. Enrollment was limited to eight participants. Applicants were encouraged to describe the manuscript resources they were consulting in their own research, as participants had an opportunity to discuss with the class the textual problems they encountered in their work with Renaissance English manuscripts.

Director: Heather Wolfe is Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She has edited Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland: Life and Letters (2001), The Pen’s Excellencie: Treasures from the Manuscript Collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library (2002), and with Alan Stewart, Letterwriting in Renaissance England (2004), and has written several articles on manuscripts in early modern England.

Laetitia Yeandle is Curator Emeritus of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She coedited with Richard Dunn The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649 (1996) and edited the text of The Tractates for the Folger Library edition of The Works of Richard Hooker (1990). With Jean Preston, she coauthored Handwriting in England: 1400-1650 (1992) and with Giles E. Dawson, Elizabethan Handwriting, 1500-1650: A Manual (1966).