One month left to submit an abstract for our conference 'Bound for Devotion: The Prayer Book as Object and Practice, 1300–1800', 1-3 July 2026 in Leiden:
www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...
#medieval #earlymodern #bookhistory
Two carvings of a tooth. Inside are scenes from Hell.
"The Tooth Worm as Hell's Demon,” 18th century. The two halves open up to reveal a scene about the infernal torments of a tooth worms which people believed caused cavities in the past. Complete with mini skulls, hellfire, and naked people wielding clubs.
📣 #CfP: "Death and Bereavement in Early Modern Britain, 1520–1689"
Join us for a one-day conference at the University of St Andrews on 26 June 2026. The keynote speaker is Professor Alec Ryrie.
The deadline for proposals is 11 December 2025. #EarlyModernHistory #skystorians
One of my students has been featured on the university special collections blog for their work from my Material Bibliography class. It's a fascinating book with tons of manuscript additions. Check it out! 📖
Oh very jealous! 🤩 That's been on my list for over a decade as well!
The Doing History in Public @historyinpublic.bsky.social
website by grad students and ECR at Cambridge might be useful to showcase early career historians' work in this area! doinghistoryinpublic.org
#cfp for the 2026 Conference of the History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland, ‘Women Religious: Patronage & Networks from Medieval to Modern’ taking place at Queen Mary University of London on 11/12 June. Please share widely #nuntastic
historyofwomenreligious.org/call-for-pap...
An etching by William Hogarth entitled 'The Laughing Audience', dated to 1733. In the scene an audience of people is depicted in a theatre, there are people seated in rows in the foreground, mostly men in wigs, all of whom are laughing. The upper register depicts the balcony seats were men flirt with women who are selling something out of baskets. There are lit candle sconces on the walls.
'Well, sir, learn to jest in good time; there's time for all things'-William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors
☛ New on the blog: ‘By a Lover of Ha, Ha, He’: Jest Books in a Cambridge Auction Catalogue by Anna Grace Gragg (MLitt student @standrewshist.bsky.social) 🃏📖😆
ustc.ac.uk/news/by-a-lo...
‼️Next year, the REBPAF Final Conference will be held in Dublin.‼️
We invite submissions of papers & posters; the deadline is 15 Dec 2025. We look forward to your contributions and to welcoming you to Ireland!📚
#REBPAF #MSCA #REBPAFConference #CfP #BookHistory
[See images for details & how to apply.]
This is for people who are familiar with Italian sixteenth-century handwriting and/or who are clever at manipulating images. I think someone wrote their name on this frontispiece to a beauty manual in 1571 then the later owner, Girolamo Garofano, wrote over it. Can anyone make the first name out?
3 countries, 3 US states, 6 cities, and 6 jobs (between academia, teaching, and museums), then mix in a global pandemic, no wonder I'm tired after 7 years of this ... An oddly comforting read, even though it's sad things haven't improved in the last ten years.
The Frigate Peter and Paul in the Port of Amsterdam (17th Century), by Abraham Storck, Historisch Scheepvart Museum, Amsterdam A 17th century Dutch seascape painting illustrating at least 7 sail boats of various sizes, including the frigate of Peter and Paul, as well as a smaller transport row boat. The seas are calm and the sky is covered in swirling and fluffy clouds.
Ahoy there! New blog post!
Demi van Breukelen, master's student @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social & visiting researcher @standrewshist.bsky.social explores:
🌊'A Sea of Print: Printed Treasures in the Dutch Prize Papers Collection'
ustc.ac.uk/news/a-sea-o...
#printhistory #earlymodern #maritimehistory
So lovely! And you rarely see the scene of the Holy Family Dinner in iconography. What a fascinating find!
Page in the manuscript featuring a music staff and the text of the 'Salve Regina', below is an engraving with a holy person reading a book near a tree with a church in the background. The engraving is pasted in.
Flyleaf of the book with the provenance note reading 'a l'usage de M. Josephine
The centre of the book with two facing pasted in engravings of religious scenes.
Page in the manuscript featuring a French text on Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, in the right corner is an engraving with the holy family, Jesus on the lap of Joseph, while Mary prepares a meal. The engraving is pasted in.
A woman's touch in an #earlymodern handwritten book?
This 17th-century manuscript belonged to M. Josephine, a woman who seems to have left her mark in a unique way, by pasting in 28 different engravings, that speak to individual expression within the pages of the book.
#bookhistory #rarebooks 💙📚📜
A contributor has had to withdraw from something I'm editing, late in the day. I'm looking for a sprightly 10,000 book historical words on the broad theme of 'consumers/consumption' and the period 1450-1650 (not necessarily all of it).
You can read more about it on the @universalstc.bsky.social blog: ustc.ac.uk/news/conclave
My research into early modern conclave ballots and tally sheets in the @natlibscot.bsky.social was featured in the @heraldscotland.bsky.social this weekend!
#Conclave2025 #Conclave1655 #printedforms #earlymodern #bookhistory #papalprint #conclave #emthings
Per @washingtonpost.com: 'President Donald Trump on Thursday fired Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress — the first woman and first African American to hold the position. She was informed of the decision in a terse, two-sentence email'.
#DrCarlaHayden #LibraryofCongress.
This is both lovely and important.
An open book showing a woodcut illustration of a donkey. The donkey has one foot raised as if walking along the page.
It's #WorldDonkeyDay 🫏
To celebrate here's a delightful little donkey trotting through the pages of Historia Animalium (c.1602) by Conrad Gesner.
Wrote a little blog about some fascinating printed conclave documents I came across in the @natlibscot.bsky.social! 🗝️
Many thanks to the cataloguers of their Special Collections for documenting these objects so diligently!
This is absolutely brilliant @liamsims.bsky.social, I'm going to share it with Deborah Krohn, who has written a lot on Scappi's images!
Photo of the lifted giant page in the Mainz Cathedral. Copyrights: Markus Kohz.
Photo of the lifted giant page in the Mainz Cathedral. Copyrights: Markus Kohz.
The giant page of Gutenberg fame can now be seen for a while in the Mainz Cathedral. #booksky
A photo of the printing event in Mainz (from April 26-27th, 2025) showing a moment of the printing process: two men are lifting the paper from the woodblock. Copyrights from Markus Kohz.
A photo of the printing event in Mainz (from April 26-27th, 2025) showing the giant woodblick, and the giant printed paper open air. Copyrights from Markus Kohz.
Just in case if you missed this printing event in #Mainz: they publically printed a giant page of the Gutenberg bible in the format 5 x 7,20 meter. #bookhistory #skystorians
Congratulations to Joshua Rushton, whose article 'The Emotional Dimension of Shrine Formation in Early Modern Catholicism' is now out in Cultural and Social History. Read more about this fascinating work here: sites.manchester.ac.uk/bodies-emoti...
A seventeenth-century courtier dressed in a simpler style with fancier clothes he has abandoned bing arranged on a chair by a servant. The setting is an early modern interior with a tapestry on the wall and an open leaded window behing the courtier. Chairs line the wall. Below a poem in French explains the courtier's costume changes in response to a sumptuary edict.
🎺HEAR YE, HEAR YE:
We are happy announce our latest post, 'The Fabric of Everyday Life: Sumptuary Laws in Early Modern France', written by @cmfgillain.bsky.social, a postdoctoral researcher on the Communicating the Law in Europe, 1500-1750 project!
Read all about it: ustc.ac.uk/news/the-fab...
Red marks in a cross and four loves over letterpress.
Detail of red lines and letters.
Red rectangle design with inscribed triangles in diamond shape over letterpress on right side of book.
Chevron pattern bleed through on left, concentric open triangles meeting in the middle on the right.
Ancient Acrostic Action!
It may look like highlighter havoc, but the red stripes in each edition of this 1595 letterpress book mark out 4th century poems in a Panegyric of Constantine!
#WordSearch
#GraphicDesignIsMyPassion 1/?
#NewberryLibrary
i-share-nby.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01...
Domenico Remps, Cabinet of Curiosities, Opificio delle Petre Dure, Florence. A wooden display cabinet stuffed with wonders and curiosities: corals, images, beetles, a skull etc.
Fantastic news for all #earlymodern #skystorians: Next week, the Natalie Zemon Davis Memorial Lectures 2025 will take place in Vienna with Prof. Lorraine Daston, hosted by the CEU. The leitmotiv of the lecture series: Diversity. And the best: you can also attend online.
www.ceu.edu/article/2025...
The title page of a sixteenth century book entitled: 'LEXICON LATINOPOLONI-CUM EX OPTIMIS LATINAE LINGVAE SCRIPTORI-BUS CONCINNATUM, which is dated to 1564. There are some faded manuscript annotations under the main title of the text.
Learn more about the relationship between Polish print and the Latin language in the early modern period in our latest blog ‘We are Poles, so, of course, we print in Latin’ by COMLAWEU PhD student in @standrewshist.bsky.social, Paweł Pietrowcew!
www.ustc.ac.uk/news/we-are-...
an illustrated title page of an early modern book
We're excited to reach 1,000 followers (and counting) on Bluesky!
In honour of this milestone, we'd like to share our catalogued edition with the USTC no. 1000:
Les illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye Lyon, Etienne Baland et Jean Rocher, 1510
www.ustc.ac.uk/editions/1000
