Let’s take a look at our five most popular #FolgerFinds posts on Instagram during 2017. Search #FolgerFinds on Instagram or Twitter for more images from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection—and add your own finds!
#1: Early modern eclipses
(To see all four images, hover over the photo and click the arrow that appears on the right.)
#2: A 1564 precursor to the yearbook
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A 1564 "album amicorum" belonging to Johann Ulrich Höcklin. The album amicorum was an early modern precursor to the autograph or yearbook. It seems a number of Höcklin's fellow university students in Tübingen contributed, signing their names or inscribing verses on the blank pages of Höcklin's copy of Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Other entries were made at Dola, Besançon and Paris, and among the contributors are Friedrich I, duke of Würtemberg, Melchior Sebisch, Felix Platter, Julius Pflug, Georg Otto, Nicolaus Varnbüler, and Johann Jacob Grynaeus. #FolgerFinds #yearbook #autographbook #librariesofinstagram #oldbooklove #bookstagram #bookporn #booklovers #bookstagrammer #Ovid #Metamorphoses
A post shared by Folger Shakespeare Library (@folgerlibrary) on Nov 26, 2017 at 7:35am PST
#3: Nineteenth-century silhouettes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
#4: The first edition of Richard III
#5: A Romeo and Juliet illustration from a 1951-1952 notebook created by a Romanian teenager
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A page from the 1951 – 1952 notebook of talented Romanian teenager Adriana Luiza Wassermann. The book is full of Wassermann's notes on world literature, along with her gorgeous watercolor illustrations and titles. It also includes dated comments from Wassermann's tutor; they are generally favorable, but there is occasional criticism, as on April 2, 1952: "It would be good to write nicely, not only draw nicely." Eight of Shakespeare's plays appear in the manuscript, along with works by many Romanian authors as well as Pushkin, Tolstoy, Balzac, Zola, Sinclair, and Sinclair Lewis. The manuscript was a gift from Dr. Ernest H. Latham, who found it in a used bookstore in Bucharest. Latham suggests that Wassermann was likely Jewish and would have been in the 10th class at the time, and about 16 or 17 years old. Latham writes that in the early-1950s, the Romanian communist terror would have been at its height: between 1950 and 1958, 75,808 people were arrested by the regime. We don't know much about the manuscript beyond what Latham deduced when he sent it to us, but we can't wait to learn more! #manuscript #Shakespeare #WorldLiterature #europeanliterature #librariesofinstagram #bookstagram #watercolor #doodle #doodles #illustration #inspiring #folgerlibrary #folgerfinds #wassermann #romeoandjuliet
A post shared by Folger Shakespeare Library (@folgerlibrary) on Nov 6, 2017 at 12:48pm PST
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