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roaringgirle.bsky.social
claire m. l. bourne
@roaringgirle.bsky.social
1.2K followers 440 following 130 posts
¶ a figure of tollerable [sic] disorder ¶ plays & typography & dirty books ¶ accidental miltonist ¶ editrix ¶ elder-cat mom ¶ she|her|hers ¶ all opinions my own ¶ https://www.ofpilcrows.com
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roaringgirle.bsky.social
seeking pointers to texts (academic or otherwise; primary or secondary; early modern or not) that discuss/theorize 'failure'?

bonus points if it specifically addresses _textual_ 'failure'.

here's an impression of fallen type for your troubles👇
A close-up image of a printed playtext on a page in _Comedies & Tragedies_ (1647) where the inked impression of a piece of fallen type is visible. You can see the rectangular body of the typesort and make out that the letter on top of it is probably a lower-case 'r'.
November 20, 2025 at 6:38 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
i’m talking more about john milton and ‘books read promiscuously’ on monday at penn state.

if you’re in central PA and want to learn about what we are learning about milton’s reading from what he wrote in his books, i’d love to see you!

📚♾️
October 23, 2025 at 12:58 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
a tiny bit of good news is that we have secured funding to digitize john milton's copy of holinshed's CHRONICLES (1587).

the images will form part of MILTON'S LIBRARY, an open-access site featuring the 10 books positively identified as milton's w/ transcriptions/translations of his marginal notes.
A close-up image of a handwritten note in a sixteenth-century book. The note reads: 'Spenser repor / teth otherwise / [o]f this Knight / [D]ialogue of Ire- / [la]nd / [p]. 76.
October 14, 2025 at 7:27 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
paperback coming early 2026! ✨
September 5, 2025 at 8:42 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
new academic year = new planner
August 17, 2025 at 3:53 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
editor for life, it seems
August 15, 2025 at 11:02 AM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
add one+ of these titles in the ELEMENTS IN SHAKESPEARE & TEXT series to your summer reading list. they're short!

look out for more titles soon—& please get in touch with me or @loughnrv.bsky.social if you have your own idea for an element! we'd love to chat.

ℹ️: www.cambridge.org/core/publica...
The title pages of six books in the Elements in Shakespeare and Text series. Titles and authors are as follows: Tiffany Stern, Shakespeare, Malone, and the Problems of Chronology Holger Schott Syme, Theatre History, Attribution Studies, and the Question of Evidence Paul Salzman, Facsimiles and the History of Shakespeare Editing Rory Loughnane and Willy Maley, Editing Archipelagic Shakespeare Beth Sharrock, Shakespeare Broadcasts and the Question of Value Anupam Basu, Shakespeare and Scale
June 17, 2025 at 1:47 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
a #herbook inscription for the ages:

Elizabeth Pride her Book giuen her by [the?] Lord Larrance / a ugly Lord a rogue a folle of a Lord

🔥🔥🔥

STC 22545 • @folger.edu
A handwritten inscription in the margin of THE COVNTESSE OF PEMBROKES ARCADIA (1621) that reads: “Elizabeth Pride her Book giuen her by [the?] Lord Larrance / a ugly Lord a rogue a folle of a Lord” STC 22545 • Folger Shakespeare Library
June 6, 2025 at 1:05 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
four. different. ampersands. !!!!

& they all illustrate the origin of the ampersand in the ligature of the latin conjunction “et” (“and”).

222050 • @folger.edu
A close-up of a page (from a 17c book) printed in italic type highlighting four ampersands of varying design in close proximity to each other. 222050 • Folger Shakespeare Library
June 5, 2025 at 2:15 AM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
18c caslon matrices!

Teach.Col. 270644 • @folger.edu
A series of metal matrices (moulds used to cast metal type sorts) for various letters designed by William Caslon in the eighteenth century lined up next to each other on dark felt. Teach.Col. 270644 • Folger Shakespeare Library
June 3, 2025 at 2:18 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
not of an age, but for all time.

PR2752 1768b copy 8 vol 10 • @folger.edu
The title page of a copy (vol 10) of Edward Capell’s 1768 edition of Shakespeare where the title reads: “THE WORKS OF HAKESPEARE.” PR2752 1768b copy 8 vol 10 • Folger Shakespeare Library
May 23, 2025 at 6:55 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
paperscape
Detail of a sheet of laid paper viewed in front of a light sheet, emphasizing imperfections in the fibers (plus a dead winged insect preserved in/on the surface of the paper). PR2752 1768b c4 v7 • Folger Shakespeare Library
May 22, 2025 at 7:24 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
thanks to @saaupdates.bsky.social for including the SHAKESPEARE & PUBLIC LIBRARIES seminar on the 2026 annual meeting program.

& thanks to @bkadams.bsky.social for collaborating with me on making space for this increasingly urgent conversation about the value of public libraries.

please sign up!
SEMINAR DESCRIPTION: This seminar examines the role of public libraries (local, national and international) in the preservation, dissemination, and study of the books and other media that transmit works by Shakespeare and other early modern writers. The recent identification of two books once owned by John Milton—a Shakespeare First Folio and a copy of Holinshed’s Chronicles—at two American public libraries (The Free Library of Philadelphia and the Phoenix Public Library, respectively) and the presence of another of Milton’s books (a sammelband of early Italian editions) at a third (The New York Public Library) invites us to acknowledge and rethink an implicit bias towards well-funded elite libraries and collections as privileged sites of textual and historical research. How might our knowledge of early modern textual history and the history of early modern books in the longue durée change with greater consideration of public collections? What do (and could) scholarly partnerships with public libraries look like—and what can they achieve in terms of bolstering the value of humanistic inquiry? How might the histories of (and transmitted by) the early modern books in these collections, which we are uniquely positioned to tell, relate to the specific local communities that they serve? In this way, the seminar is also interested in the ways that public libraries feature Shakespeare in the promotion of their circulating collections, educational programming, and public events, as many U.S. public libraries did during the quatercentenaries of Shakespeare’s death in 2016 and of the publication of the first folio in 2023. While the idea for this seminar emerges from our experiences working in American public libraries, we would welcome contributions from scholars and librarians considering the role of public libraries in Shakespeare and early modern studies in various different regional and national traditions.
May 17, 2025 at 4:11 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
edward capell, a stickler for bibliographic accuracy—here citing a copy of

FOVR PLAYES, OR Morall Representations, IN ONE (in Comedies & Tragedies [1647])

S.b.11 • @folger.edu • catalog.folger.edu/record/224645
A detail of a page from an eighteenth-century manuscript prepared by Edward Capell, highlighting his fastidious citational practice. This citation of the signatures reads: “(Dddddddd.-Fffffffff.4.b[superscript].E.)”
May 16, 2025 at 12:57 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
❗️coming in 2026❗️—

SHAKESPEARE & TEXTUAL FAILURE: NEW HISTORIES, METHODS, & PRACTICES

i am excited to be working with an all-star group of contributors on this essay collection & grateful to @ardenpublisher.bsky.social for supporting this project.

stay tuned!
an image of fallen type in a copy of Comedies and tragedies written by Francis Beaumont and Iohn Fletcher Gentlemen. Never printed before, and now published by the authours originall copies (1647) • Wing B1581 • personal collection • sig. Mm3r
April 2, 2025 at 11:14 AM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
✨📖OUT NOW!📖✨

This new Element by Anupam Basu discusses and demonstrates computational techniques for studying the corpus of early English print at scale.

DOWNLOAD NOW* FOR FREE: doi.org/10.1017/9781...

*until 04.15.25

cc @loughnrv.bsky.social
A book cover with a black background and the image of a row of book spines across the bottom. The text reads: “Cambridge Elements / Shakespeare and Text / Shakespeare and Scale / Anupam Basu”
April 1, 2025 at 10:45 AM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
a manicule pointing to a trefoil!

📖👉☘️♥️

Nicetas Choniates, Nicetae Acominati Choniatae ... Imperii graeci historia, [&c] (1593) • GEN *GC5.W8315.557ab, houghton library
A detail of the margins of a sixteenth-century book where a reader has drawn a hand pointing at a trefoil (which resembles a small three-leaf clover).
March 24, 2025 at 5:39 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
we’re closing out #RenSA2025 with a discussion of bookish milton. please join us at 4:30 pm!

thanks to @bibsocamer.bsky.social for sponsoring this panel.

ℹ️ rsa.confex.com/rsa/2025/mee...
Information about a panel session called Milton and the Book at RSA 2025. Full text available by following the link in the post. Information about a panel session called Milton and the Book at RSA 2025. Full text available by following the link in the post.
March 22, 2025 at 10:57 AM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
double impression 💫

paradise lost : a poem in twelve books / the author john milton • PR3560.A1 1674 • eberly family special collections library, psu libraries

#textualfailure
Detail of a printed page from a late-seventeenth-century English book where the type has been printed twice, the second impression slightly offset from the first. An image of the full page from which the detail of the other image is taken showing the full effect of the double impression of type.
March 7, 2025 at 11:22 AM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
i'm excited to share new work on milton's books at RSA & doubly excited to do so alongside @mgyarn.bsky.social & amrita dhar on a panel sponsored by @bibsocamer.bsky.social!

thanks to @aarontpratt.bsky.social for facilitating & @chrisvvarren.bsky.social for chairing.

please join if you're free! 👇
A screenshot of information about a panel at RSA 2025 called "Milton and the Book." Full text available via this link: https://rsa.confex.com/rsa/2025/meetingapp.cgi/Session/8488
March 6, 2025 at 1:11 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
one year ago this week, we identified john milton’s copy of holinshed’s CHRONICLES (1587) at the phoenix public library thanks to an exploratory book history get-together imagined into being by @bkadams.bsky.social & jonathan hope.

cc @aarontpratt.bsky.social & @jes1003.bsky.social
Two people in the rare book room at the Phoenix Public Library, one looking at a large folio volume resting open on a blue book cushion and the other consulting information on a laptop.
March 3, 2025 at 12:05 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
i am taking my work on the old-spelling oxford shakespeare edition (the one that was ultimately abandoned in the 1970s) out for another spin. description below.

if you're in central PA and would like to join the conversation on monday, march 3, please message me for the pre-circulated paper. 🙏📖📚✨
A flyer advertising the following work-in-progress event with the following copy: STANDING TYPE: Editorial Labor, Book Design, & the Failed Oxford Shakespeare, 1929-1982 A manuscript workshop sponsored by the Consortium for Early Modern and Medieval Studies with Dr. Claire M. L. Bourne, Associate Professor of English and Helena Rubenstein University Endowed Fellow in the Humanities This workshop will pre-circulate a paper drawn from Bourne's monograph in progress. This manuscript offers a revisionist account of a Shakespeare edition that never materialized: the massive Oxford University Press old-spelling Shakespeare begun by R.B. McKerrow in 1929 and inherited by Alice Walker when McKerrow died in 1940. Six plays for the edition were printed in galley proofs in the late 1930s. The type for those proofs was still standing in the press' warehouse in the late 1970s, a monument to innovative and intensive—but ultimately cancelled—editorial labor. In public, the edition's "failure" has been blamed on Walker’s intellectual change-of-heart about the value of reproducing the orthography of the earliest editions. In private, it has been blamed on her incompetence and predisposition to wander away from the project in favor of other pursuits, both academic and domestic. However, fifty years of correspondence between McKerrow (then Walker) and their handlers at OUP illuminates two other reasons why the edition never came to press: design impasses around typography and page layout; and unsustainable compensation practices, particularly in relation to Walker's work. This paper discusses how the material conditions of editorial labor are intrinsic to editorial craft and decision-making—and frames Walker's call for the destruction of all her papers relating to the project upon her death in 1982 as the ultimate act of editorial defiance.
February 27, 2025 at 12:58 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
✨📖OUT NOW!📖✨

This new Element by @allmirthnomatter.bsky.social studies the framing features of Royal Shakespeare Company live theatre broadcasts & situates them in the long history of Shakespearean paratexts.

DOWNLOAD NOW* FOR FREE: www.cambridge.org/core/element...

*until 02.24.25
A book cover with a black background and a row of books (spines out) along the bottom. It reads in white letters: "Cambridge Elements / Shakespeare and Text / Shakespeare Broadcasts and the Question of Value / Beth Sharrock"
February 11, 2025 at 5:37 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
i will finish this book in 2025. i will finish this book in 2025. i will finish this book in 2025. i will finish this book in 2025. i will finish this book in 2025. i will finish…

[fwiw, the book is ACCIDENTAL SHAKESPEARE & this is chapter 1. despite the blank page i have bits & pieces written.]
A blank word-processing page except for a bolded title that reads: “Bookwork as Editorial Method: Edward Capell & the ‘Fair’ Page”
February 7, 2025 at 7:58 PM
roaringgirle.bsky.social
i have a #paleographychallenge for you! any help with the larger marginal note would be appreciated.

based on notes elsewhere in the book, the handwriting in darker ink is likely late 17c.

ℹ️: Basilikon Dōron (1603), JC393.C3J27 1603, Eberly Family Special Collections Library (PSU Libraries)
Handwritten notes in the margin of a 17th-century printed book. A page from of a 17th-century printed book with handwritten notes in the margin.
December 7, 2024 at 10:57 AM