𝕽𝖊𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖘 𝖔𝖗 𝕭𝖊𝖌𝖌𝖆𝖗𝖘 (Will Phillips)

On Reading Widely and Weirdly In 2026, read as if your life depended on it.

Read often, read weird stuff, then cheerlead like hell for others to do the same. My latest post contains mentions to @backlisted.bsky.social, BookBub, and other savory morsels.
open.substack.com/pub/brianstu...

Bedankt!

That first line confounds me.

With apologies on the use of "early modern" for 1799 to those who prefer an earlier periodization, of course. ;)

Hey #earlymodern #paleography peeps, any of you got an idea on this 1799-dated inscription?

(In the back of a vellum binding of Jacob Coenraeds Mayvogel's Gulden-spiegel and a few other works I stumbled into at a used bookstore today.)

“If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it to be, a study bearing fruit beyond price." - Michel de Montaigne, 16th century French philosopher

This scholar in his study got me pondering: who is the first living author in the west to appear in print? Many incunables are of medieval or classical texts, but who is the earliest living writer to see their works in print? Woodcut from Lyons in 1498. @theulspeccoll.bsky.social Inc.5.D.2.10[4435]

Thank you for assembling this list!

It's a new year, so it's time to repost this starter pack again. Let me know if you wish to be added. #earlymodern

go.bsky.app/VsHZ9xJ

Ole Anjou has always struck me every bit as Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka in his reaction to being made "Defender of the Liberty of the Netherlands..." then trying to take over Antwerp.

Mulert used a copy of Paradin’s Devises interleaved with blank pages for his friends to inscribe (consider that books were often bought as loose leaves, then taken to a bookbinder).

Friends left their own art and words next to the printed text and images... such as this bony boi.

In the 16th century, students & scholars kept albums amicorum (“friendship books”). Friends added coats of arms, mottos, poems, or drawings to mark shared study, travel, and friendship.

This belonged to a young man named Seino Mulert and dates to his college tour in the 1560s.

"...Boop."

From Claude Paradin’s Devises héroïques, published first in 1551 by Plantin in Antwerp. Emblem books paired images with moral mottos, popular with elite, humanist audiences.

🧵

#ClaudeParadin #PlantinPress #EarlyModern #BookHistory #Renaissance #AlbumsAmicorum

A detail of a broadside showing a man, a postal messenger with a letter in his hand, positioned within a text part. More details in the thread

A man travelling within the lines of a text printed in 1621. Enjoy this short 🧵 for #skystorians and friends of news flows.

Appreciate you putting these all together!

Another exodus from the other site, from the sounds of it? If you're looking for the #EarlyModern gang, we've got three starter packs that compile a bunch of them. I can keep adding to the third, just poke.

Here's the OG: go.bsky.app/VQeQbbF 1/3

Excessive modernism - departments unbalanced towards the study of modern history - is the crop-blight of history departments and has long been so.

Modern history and modernists are valuable and important, of course, but the ratios have long since skewed absurdly in favor of modern history.

I made a feed for history-focused accounts on bluesky as I could not find an already established extensive one. More info further in the thread. Please suggest accounts to add to this feed or share this post if you want to help me grow this.

Very cool bit of late sixteenth century inspired character design!

This is where I post from:

A highlighted section of text from the book Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. It reads: "Domesticated dinosaurs?" Hammond snorted. "Nobody wants domesticated dinosaurs, Henry. They want the real thing." "But that's my point," Wu said. "I don't think they do. They want to see their expectation, which is quite different." Hammond was frowning. "You said yourself, John, this park is entertainment," Wu said. "And entertainment has nothing to do with reality. Entertainment is antithetical to reality."

So as some of you know, in historical games studies I coined the term ‘authenticity lite’ to describe the type of ‘accuracy/authenticity’ players & developers actually want from games focused on the past. And I just want to share this section of ‘Jurassic Park’ which works brilliantly for it. 🗃️

I am immediately reminded of muddy medievals and early moderns clothed inevitably in only grays and browns.

Yeah, as an Okie, I immediately caught that, too.

Appreciate you sharing your experience with the course. As a non-academic with an avocational interest in the subject, I've long looked at their program with curiosity - along with similar programs at Berkeley and Columbia.

I've moved on from the 14th century and the theater of the SCA's rattan stick fighting community, but this book always stuck in my head. So when I found it in such good shape in a local used bookstore, I had to pick it up for sentimentality alone.

When I first started rooting around the quasi-medieval reenactment org called the SCA twenty years ago, many of the organizations "knights" extolled this novel set in the Hundred Years' War as particularly exemplary in its treatment of chivalry.

An unexpected antique book find for the personal library from this weekend:

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘺 by Arthur Conan Doyle. This volume is from c. 1895, published by Donohue, Henneberry & Co.

#bookcollector #antiques #oldbooks #arthurconandoyle #HundredYearsWar

That blackwork at the collar, though!

This no-nonsense basket hilt #sword goes *hard.*

My hypothesis: late 16th century continental / German basket hilt paired to a (maybe not much) later 17th century blade. The fuller design and paired crescents reminds me of many 17th-18th century broadsword blades I've seen.

#militaryhistory #hema

Swiss papal guards, mid 1500s, by Giuseppe Rava: an Italian painter who works in a wide range of military history

#landsknecht #militaryhistory #militaryart #sixteenthcentury #16thcentury #armor