Practical Paleography

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Practical Paleography is an informal series of paleography sessions meeting every two weeks from November 2014 through March 2015; these sessions are sponsored by Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) for the staff and readers of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Each session will focus on transcription and mark-up (i.e., XML encoding) of a few 16th and/or 17th century manuscript pages from the Folger collection – announcements with information about particular manuscript pages will appear a week or so before each session.

No experience or registration is required, and you can attend as many or as few sessions as you like. Short handouts will be provided, and full transcriptions of the manuscripts we read will appear here following the sessions. You may want to bring a laptop to try your own transcriptions or take notes.

We are particularly eager to work on manuscripts suggested by participating staff and readers. If you have a manuscript page or two that you would like to have the group examine, please contact Heather Wolfe and/or Paul Dingman in advance of the session(s) you’d like to attend.

This series of Practical Paleography will run every other Tuesday from November 18 until March 24 (10 meetings) in the Board Room, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM, right after tea. See manuscript details about individual sessions below, and check back for more information (and full transcriptions) as Practical Paleography progresses. Here's a link to some introductory pages on the early modern alphabet and common abbreviations: Alphabet Book.

Nov. 18

Brief introduction to secretary hand and common abbreviations. Intriguing recipes from the following manuscript collections:

V.a.430 - Cookery and medicinal recipes of the Granville family ⇒ Transcriptions
V.b.301 - Cookbook of Grace Blome ⇒ Transcriptions

Dec. 2

Quick review of alphabet then a look at some interesting letters from the following manuscript: 

X.c.61, Papers of the Rattray family of Craighall
 ⇒  Transcription

Letters completed:

  • 119
  • 137

Dec. 16

Further examination of secretary hand and review of alphabet before tackling V.a.245 fol. 50v-51r: (Poetical miscellany (manuscript), ca. 1640)

V.a.245 ⇒ Transcriptions

Dec. 30

Transcriptions of two letters from the Papers of the Bagot Family

Jan. 13

Training in the use of Dromio, and practice transcribing secretary hand through the transcription of 65v-66r from V.a.245.

Upcoming Sessions

  • Jan. 27
  • Feb. 10
  • Feb. 24
  • Mar. 10
  • Mar. 24