Practical Paleography

Practical Paleography is an informal series of paleography sessions meeting every two weeks from November 2014 through March 2015; the 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 more specifics about which manuscript(s) will appear a week before the session. We are particularly eager to work on manuscripts suggested by participants. If you have a manuscript page or two that you’d like to have multiple eyes on, please contact Heather Wolfe (hwolfe@folger.edu) in advance of the session(s) you’d like to attend.

No experience is required, and you can attend as many or as few sessions as you’d like. Please bring a laptop if you have one. Short handouts will be provided, and full transcriptions of the manuscripts examined will appear here on this Folgerpedia page, so check back.

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.

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)

V.b.301(Cookbook of Grace Blome)