Drawing on the Folger’s rich collections of 16th- and 17th-century books, manuscripts, and works of art, Voices for Tolerance in an Age of Persecution tells the story of the struggle between tolerance and persecution. It traces the roots of our quest for liberty of conscience and freedom of expression and explores how individuals and communities in early modern Europe experienced, contemplated, and responded to the forces of hate, racism, and intolerance as their world expanded to include peoples and cultures radically different from their own. Essays explore many topics including religious dissent, the protestant and Catholic reformations in Germany, protestant identity in France, Jews in early modern Europe, Africans in England and Scotland, Catholics in Renaissance England, the Puritan revolution, Islam, early modern Ireland, and print culture.

Voices for Tolerance in an Age of Persecution

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Folger Shakespeare Library

This is a complete facsimile edition of fourteen autograph letters of John Donne that are among the greatest treasures of the Folger Library. The letters, dating from February and March 1602, relate to Donne's clandestine marriage to Anne More and are addressed to his father-in-law, Sir George More, and to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord keeper, who was also Donne's employer.The text of a letter provides one part of the story, while its very tangibility -- the ancient folds, the grime and fingerprints deposited by the writer, deliverer, and readers, the broken seals, the ink blots, the idosyncratic spelling, the location of a signature -- tells another. An understanding of a letter's written and unwritten social signals brings into focus a fuller, grittier, and a clearer view of life in 17th century England.John Donne's Marriage Letters was recognized in the AIGA "50 books/50 Covers" competition as one of 100 examples of outstanding book and book cover design produced in 2005.

John Donne's Marriage Letters in the Folger Shakespeare Library

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

One of the greatest treasures in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library, The Trevelyon Miscellany is a 400-year-old hand drawn and lettered book created by the skilled scribe and patternmaker Thomas Trevelyon. Borrowing words and images from English and European woodcuts, engravings, broadsides, almanacs, emblem books, and the Bible, Trevelyon created a rich and fascinating encyclopedia of daily life and thought in Shakespeare's England.Familiar scenes of domesticity and husbandry are intertwined with accounts of the rulers of England, descriptions of local fairs, the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, astronomy according to Ptolemy, illustrations of the seasons, the nine muses and seven deadly sins, Old Testament history, household proverbs, alphabets, and embroidery patterns. A massive volume (18 inches tall and weighing over 17 pounds), this monumental work is now available to be studied and enjoyed in a gorgeous facsimile edition, thanks to state-of-the-art conservation and high-resolution digitization.Produced to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Folger Shakespeare Library, this limited edition facsimile is printed on archival paper, Smyth sewn, and bound in cloth-wrapped boards with a reinforced spine and full-color dust jacket. In addition to the 594 pages illustrated by Trevelyon, the volume includes an introduction by Heather Wolfe, Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Museum, as well as indexes to poetry, scripture, subjects, images, and Trevelyon's sources.[When ordering, please note special shipping and handling charges of $20 per volume to U.S. addresses via UPS Ground. Customers who would like expedited shipping should contact our order fulfillment center at hfscustserv@press.jhu.edu for actual shipping rates.]For more information about the Trevelyon Miscellany manuscript, go to: http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=2283

The Trevelyon Miscellany of 1608: A Facsimile Edition of Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.b.232

History

Trevelyon, Thomas

Europe

Shakespeare and American Life celebrates the extraordinary English poet’s influence on American culture – whether high, low, or middlebrow – to mark the 150th anniversary of Henry Folger’s birth and the 75th anniversary of the great library he and Emily created for Shakespearean scholarship. A sampler of such scholarship is here presented by nine essays that offer contexts for the multitude of images and objects on display in the Folger Library’s Great Hall during the spring and summer of 2007, many of them – and a few additional images – reproduced in this catalogue. The essays explore Shakespeare’s influence on America’s cultural history from a variety of perspectives. Chronologically, they range from the colonial period, to the adoption of Shakespeare as an “American genius” in the nineteenth century, to twentieth-century musical comedy, film, theater, and finally to Shakespeare as we know him in twentyfirst century America. Culturally, the essays range from the academic (about editors and scholars), to the theatrical (Shakespeare’s continuous presence on the American stage), to the popular (the appropriation of Shakespeare as a popular icon in advertising, folk art, and kitsch).

Shakespeare in American Life

Literature & Fiction

Dramas & Plays

The first newspaper arrived in England in 1620 and sparked a huge demand for up-to-the minute reports on domestic and world events. Men and women in Renaissance England were addicted to news, whether from the battlefields of Europe, or the scandal-filled salons of its courtiers. Newspapers commented on politics, crime, omens, bad weather, natural disasters, and strange apparitions.Breaking News traces the development of the newspaper in England, from its origins in manuscript letters and imported corantos in Shakespeare’s England, to the introduction of daily newspapers, regional journals, and specialist magazines around 1700, as well as the first stirrings of American journalism. The examples of early journalism illustrated here reveal the indelible mark the early English newspaper has left on modern news culture.

Breaking News: Renaissance Journalism and the Birth of the Newspaper

Peacey, Jason

Kyle, Chris R.

Extending the Book introduces the largely-forgotten art of extra-illustration -- individually adding portraits or other illustrations to published books -- and explores what this personalized form of book design reveals about the history of reading. It includes a brief introduction to the concept of designing and creating a unique book by adding external material and an overview of the phenomenon’s history and its heyday in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The works of Shakespeare -- the most popular single author for extra-illustration -- exemplify the practice as it changed over time. From the beginning, extra-illustrators had to defend the “exquisite handicraft” (in the words of an 1890 proponent) against accusations of “breaking up a good book to illustrate a worse one” (in the words of an 1892 critic). This book examines the art and the practice of extra-illustration, from crudely altered books to beautiful new creations.

Extending the Book: The Art of Extra-Illustration

Sillars, Stuart

Blake, Erin C.

Other Media

Hamlet (Folger's Library General Reader's Shakespeare)

Shakespeare., William

The merry wives of Windsor (The Folger Library general reader's Shakespeare)

While emphasizing the liveliness of Shakespeare's play in stage terms, David Crane also claims that this citizen comedy needs to be taken as an expression of Shakespeare's fundamental understanding of human life, conveyed centrally in the character of Falstaff. In the process Crane also examines the bard's free and vigorous use of different linguistic worlds within the play. 8 photos.

The Merry Wives of Windsor (The Folger Library General Reader's Shakespeare)

The growth of natural history in Stuart England from Gerard to the Royal Society (Folger booklets on Tudor and Stuart civilization)

Science & Math

Hoeniger, F. D. (David), and J. F. M

Nature & Ecology

The Schoolmaster (1570) (Folger Documents of Tudor and Stuart Civilization)

Roger Ascham

Literary

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