MS in English on paper, Oxford or London, ca. 1586-1600, 29-32 lines of blank verse in a good, fluent, full English secretary script, ruled around in red ink with speakers' names outside the rules, no dividers but with stage directions boxed.

After their invention by Venetian merchants, forms of these books were kept by everyone from H.P. Lovecraft to Thomas Jefferson.

Letter from Paul Bransom letter to Kicki Hays, 1947 Oct. 17.

Eight years ago—that’s something like five decades in Internet time—the Smithsonian held an exhibition, “More than Words:

2 v. 26 cm

These are more pictures from the scrapbook I found at Goodwill a couple of months ago. When I opened it up, I was amazed -- it is full of hundreds of clippings of movie and stage stars from about 1916. Someone compiled a scrapbook from issues of Photoplay and other magazines. Many times she cut out the photographs precisely, and glued the images into the book. But most of the images are just loose, tucked between the pages. The condition of the clippings is amazing. The paper is not brittle or yellowed. Wherever this book has been for the last 90 years, it was kept safe. I am gradually photographing most of the items from the book. There are many, many more pictures, though.

Before people were dropping GIFs into Gmail, letter writers were adding illustrations for that emotional or contextual punch.

This scrapbook contains clippings and decals that appear to range from 1889 to 1910, including a couple of pages on Halley's Comet. Very cool find!

Letter from Moses Soyer to David Soyer, ca. 1940.

It was full of pictures and descriptions of 1949 and 1950 cars!

It was full of pictures and descriptions of 1949 and 1950 cars!

1. You can now Sleep at the Palace of Versailles Set within the gates of Versailles, Le Grand Contrôle was built in 1681 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Louis XIV’s favourite architect and an icon of French classicism. The grandiose building once played host to Europe’s political and cultural elite, from ambassadors and artists, to musicians, writers…

THE BEAUTIFUL DIARIES OF PAUL KLEE GO DIGITAL POSTED IN: ALEPH RECOMMENDS The grand artist of visual language left more than drawings and paintings. His person

When we speak to visitors or students about our medieval manuscripts, we frequently find ourselves spending a significant amount of time talking about how such books were created. We discuss the ways that scribes worked and artists painted, and quite often we will then be asked just how it is...

from the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore, Maryland.

This is an example of a Gospel Lectionary written in the archaic, majuscule form of Greek letters. Liturgical books were inherently conservative and therefore apt to retain such antiquated writing. The scribe, a certain monk Theodore, has recorded his name in a verse at the end of the volume (fol. 179v). A leaf removed from this manuscript ca. 1900 is now in Sofia (National Library of Bulgaria, Greek MS 2). To explore fully digitized manuscripts with a virtual page-turning application, please visit Walters Ex Libris.

Leaf from an antiphonary with historiated initial B depicting David as musician

Anonymous manuscript containing poems by various authors, in various hands. Includes Shakespeare's second sonnet. Page/Caption: [97r-96v] [mid 17th century] 1 v., (190 p.) 13 x 7 cm. Subjects: English poetry Genre: Commonplace books Manuscripts Poems Cite as: James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Repository: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University Bibliographic Record Number: 2031683 Call Number: Osborn b205

Missal

Letter from Paul Bransom letter to Kicki Hays, 1947 Oct. 17.

Lace Book of Marie de’ Medici, Lace margins, Walters Manuscript W.494, Folio 15v by Walters Art Museum Illuminated Manuscripts https://flic.kr/p/D2W6Ld

For those of you unfamiliar with medieval manuscripts, here are some handy tips to help you tell your quires from your graduals. The British Library's Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts supplies a helpful glossary to the terms used in describing medieval manuscripts. The glossary is reproduced there with the kind permission...

This English Psalter was made for an East Anglian patron at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The original Psalter contains a calendar for adapted Sarum use, the Psalms, Canticles, Litany, and Office of the Dead, with additional prayers in a humanist hand added by a fifteenth century owner. The text is incomplete; about two-dozen leaves have been removed, resulting in missing historiated initials, and several partial Psalms and Canticles. Three extant historiated initials, accompanied by incipits in gold, stand out among a multitude of smaller painted and flourished initials. The majority of the text is written in accomplished textualis prescissa. This Psalter has stylistic and textual connections to the Gorleston Psalter (British Library Add. 49622) and the Ormesby Psalter (Bodl. Lib., Douce MS 366), placing it firmly within the tradition of East Anglian manuscript production in the first half of the fourteenth century. To explore fully digitized manuscripts with a virtual page-turning application, please visit Walters Ex Libris.

Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is another calendar page for January, this time from the Hours of Laudomia de Medici. The book dates from around 1502 and is richly decorated. At the base of the...

Magic is in the air this weekend, as audiences worldwide have been going to see Disney’s live action remake of its classic animated tale, Beauty and the Beast. In Disney’s version of this classic tale, an enchantress places a curse on a vain prince which turns him into a hideous...