Dr. Tara Lyons
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tarallyons.bsky.social
Dr. Tara Lyons
@tarallyons.bsky.social
2.1K followers 1.9K following 77 posts
Professor; Old books, women and libraries, early modern book storage; book trade, English literature, drama, cats, horses, bees, and little furry critters
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tarallyons.bsky.social
Dr. Tara Lyons @tarallyons.bsky.social · Jun 26
In 1671, Rachel (Fane) Bouchier, the Countess of Bath, purchased £200 of books for the library at @tcddublin.bsky.social The books were housed together and known as “The Countess of Bath’s Library.” This week I reconstructed the bequest, with the help of the amazing TCD librarians.
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
martinevanelk.bsky.social
Just discovering this database of books as symbols in Renaissance art--a wonderful resource #EarlyModern #HerBook basiraproject.org
BASIRA • Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art
basiraproject.org
August 27, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
martinevanelk.bsky.social
Today on the blog: a fascinating discussion by @franceswolfreston.bsky.social on a book on marriage and choosing a wife owned by Elizabeth Cromwell, a cousin of Oliver Cromwell earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/08/04/e... #HerBook #EarlyModern
Alexander Niccholes, A Discourse of Marriage and Wiving (1615)
A Discourse of Marriage and Wiving and of the Greatest Mystery Therein Contained: How to Choose a Good Wife from a Bad was written by Alexander Niccholes, self-identified as a “Batchelour in the Ar…
earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com
August 4, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
shannonmattern.bsky.social
Just read (+ blurbed) the galleys of this book! It's 🌟🎉🪴🔥💕!! A thrilling, moving, heartening text, given shape through @dorothyjberry.bsky.social's + @wehere.bsky.social's clever play on bibliographic + bureaucratic form. Such a ✨ mix of protocol + improvisation. Can't wait to see this out in the 🌏
dorothyjberry.bsky.social Dorothy Berry @dorothyjberry.bsky.social · Mar 13
There is so much bad news on micro and macro levels lately, I will share a little personal win. Here is a sneak peek at a very early dummy of the interior layout for my book "The House Archives Built, and Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibility," upcoming from @wehere.bsky.social press.
A mock-up of an open book- on one side there is light mint/robin's egg blue background and the text "The House Archives Built, Revisited" with smaller text in a typerwriterish font. On the other side there is a sepia photo from the 1870's of a Black man standing on a porch with his hands on a chair and his legs crossed in a jaunt manner.
August 12, 2025 at 12:31 AM
tarallyons.bsky.social
A fantastic book history project!
August 4, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
mkn.bsky.social
And ... voila!

Thanks again to my sharp-eyed copyeditor, and to @joshuajfriedman.com and @bcdreyer.social!

Just more evidence that social media can be a force for good (grammar) ...
The cover of "The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier," with the font in white over a green-tinted landscape painting of three Indigenous women on a raft, moving across a lake with mountains in the background. Partial images of four different people - Jim Beckwourth, Sacajawea, Ovando Hollister, and Polly Bemis- fold over the left side of the cover from the spine.
July 31, 2025 at 8:02 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
Wow, is the spine still intact?!! Incredible!
drleonj.bsky.social Leon Jackson @drleonj.bsky.social · Jul 31
I love a chonky codex (but this one is early c18)
Chonky c18 Ms volume
July 31, 2025 at 7:24 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
This is what I’m talkin’ about!! Thick, stout, and chonky!!
July 31, 2025 at 6:14 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
Early Modern Biblionerds: I’m looking for some thick books before 1700. what is the longest book (in pages, not words) printed before 1700? what about in quarto format?
July 31, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
aldenlibdigital.bsky.social
#Bees 🐝 1744 book! "Melisselogia: Or, the Female Monarchy..." printed in London for author John Thorley.
4 plates of illustrations & 10 chapters covering everything bees!
Catalog: bit.ly/melisselogia...
#Pollinators #18thCentury #NatureSky #IllustratedBooks #NaturalHistory #nature #RareBooks
Illustrated frontispiece with three detailed engraved bees over a botanical border and title page . Table of contents listing all ten chapters. Illustrated plate with an engraving showing an internal model of a hive along with bees and the hive in various stages of development. Illustrated foldout plate of a person seated and writing at a large desk with books in the background and a row of 6 beehives visible outside his large window.
July 24, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
The real reason academic conferences exist is that after you have marinated your brain in hundreds of books on a single field of study for 10+ years there are only so many people you can speak coherent sentences to, and it’s a pleasure to have them all in one place 😅
July 10, 2025 at 11:36 AM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
thomashendrickson.bsky.social
Booklist preserved from 3rd century Memphis (P. Petropol. 13).

Kind of cool to see that they had a copy of Aristotle's "Athenaion Politeia" (line 12)! (From Wilcken "Chrestomathie" n. 155)
July 6, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
lrb.co.uk
‘As J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, she criss-crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of rare manuscripts to add to his collection, outbidding and outsmarting rivals wherever she went.’

Francesca Wade on Belle da Costa Greene:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Francesca Wade · Why waste time hot airing? The Best-Paid Woman in NYC
In​ her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene was one of the best-paid women in New York City. As J.P. Morgan’s personal...
www.lrb.co.uk
June 25, 2025 at 1:15 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
What an accomplishment! Amazing work here on Alice Thornton!
thorntonsbooks.bsky.social Alice Thornton's Books @thorntonsbooks.bsky.social · Mar 7
Big news! The digital edition of Alice Thornton's four Books is now complete and online. There are 1,019 pages (c. 270,000 words) of Thornton’s life-writings in both modernised and semi-diplomatic versions and they are fully searchable.
#EarlyModern 🗃️ 📚 📜
thornton.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/posts/news/2...
Full and Final Edition Now Available
News article - 24 February 2025
thornton.kdl.kcl.ac.uk
June 27, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
sarahabendall.bsky.social
@serenadyer.bsky.social & I are thrilled to announce that our edited book is out now!

It focuses on how processes of making, experimenting, experiencing, & reconstructing illuminate understandings around manual labour & material life.

Overview 🧵 on 📕 chapters & our contributors! 👇
January 6, 2025 at 1:52 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
In 1671, Rachel (Fane) Bouchier, the Countess of Bath, purchased £200 of books for the library at @tcddublin.bsky.social The books were housed together and known as “The Countess of Bath’s Library.” This week I reconstructed the bequest, with the help of the amazing TCD librarians.
June 26, 2025 at 11:06 AM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
lsangha.bsky.social
📢WILLS TRANSCRIBATHON KLAXON📢

Join us on Thursday 24 July to transcribe wills and go behind the scenes of the wills project!

In person and on Zoom - full details & registration here: willstranscribathon.eventbrite.com

#EarlyModern 🗃️ #transcription @leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social
Promotional image advertising 'Wills Project Transcribathon, Thursday 24 July, 1-4pm BST, Digital Humanities Lab University of Exeter and on Zoom. The image also features a portrait of a man making his will, a photo of a box of wills and a page of a will.
June 24, 2025 at 7:46 AM
tarallyons.bsky.social
So many baby horses in Ireland this time of year! I’m in love 😍
June 22, 2025 at 9:37 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
This symposium looks fabulous!
June 22, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
dnmcinnis.bsky.social
📣 CFP: Shakespeare Quarterly special issue

Shakespeare’s Twenty-First Century / The Twenty-First Century’s Shakespeare

This will be Vanessa I. Corredera, Arthur L. Little, Jr. and my first issue as Editors! Please submit your finest!

More info: networks.h-net.org/group/announ...
Photo (by David McInnis) of Australian artist Jimmy C’s famous mural of Shakespeare in Clink Street near the Globe. It depicts Shakespeare as known via the Chandos portrait, holding a skull like Hamlet does, and a quill, in front of a psychedelic swirl of colour.
June 20, 2025 at 12:19 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
I wrote about the library of Katherine Blount’s daughter, Catharina (Blount) Freman. Check it out below:
June 19, 2025 at 8:05 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
Trolley #2 complete! The Countess of Bath, Rachel (Fane) Bourchier purchased books for Trinity Dublin College in 1671. One was Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiocus (1654), a fascinating (albeit flawed) work of orientalist scholarship.
June 19, 2025 at 12:42 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
Trolley #1. I’m at Trinity Dublin for the next two weeks to reconstruct the Countess of Bath’s library. Thanks to the library staff for helping make this happen. Now, back to work— there are more than a hundred volumes to examine. Happy days ahead.
June 17, 2025 at 11:52 AM
tarallyons.bsky.social
I’m honored to be part of this incredible lineup. See you in Dublin!
eilissmyth.bsky.social Eilís Smyth @eilissmyth.bsky.social · May 22
I’m running a Symposium on Shakespeare and Ireland @tlrhub.bsky.social on June 14! It promises to be a rich discussion and all are welcome. Please register here: tinyurl.com/yc2a7dyf
June 10, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Dr. Tara Lyons
martinevanelk.bsky.social
Today on the blog: a post by Joe Black on a copy of Robert Hill's popular Pathway to Piety in which multiple women have written their name and one used it to record some sad family history earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/06/06/r... #EarlyModern #HerBook
Robert Hill, The Path-Way to Pietie (1629)
Robert Hill’s Path-Way to Pietie was an early seventeenth-century bestseller. First published in 1606 under the title Christs Prayer Expounded, the book went through eight editions by 1629, with a …
earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com
June 6, 2025 at 8:27 PM
tarallyons.bsky.social
Read about the fabulously named “Elizabeth Skippe” and her book below.
May 20, 2025 at 4:40 AM