64-yr-old Horace Walpole in a letter to Lady Ossory on July 25, 1781: "I threw away my stick, and _me voilà dansant comme un charme!_" Then "...I shall reserve the rest of my letter for the second volume of my regeneration--however, I declare I will not _dance_: I will not make myself too cheap."

Delightful transparency from Edward Orme’s Essay on Transparencies, with a light held up behind it. Seen in the Rare Book School course I took last week, Book Illustration Processes to 1900. The book owner seems to have painted their own cat on the other side.

Not a situation that can be photographed, unfortunately: am cursing the person who doused with epic amounts of Glade the Interlibrary Loan copy of a book I borrowed. Reading and scholarship can be physically painful.

Rereading that old, enigmatic friend, Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. What’s changed since I first read it nearly 20 years ago is my delight over this line: “And what is _underlining_ but _engraving_ while we write?”

Finding Adam Smith on rhetoric to be unexpectedly delightful: "it is a great defect in the arrangement of a sentence when it has what they call a tail coming after it, that is when the sense appears to be concluded when it is not really so."

These strawberries are so fresh, delicious and beautiful I had to share. Bad growing season for fruit in the Mid-Atlantic—there will be no peaches, no cherries, few berries, alas—because of an unexpected frost that killed the tender blossoms that had come out this spring. Blessed strawberries.

For years I thought it was just an evergreen sprig until an audience member at the Caxton Club—where I was delivering a lecture—pointed out it was a yew. Thanks for sharing this, Matt!

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"Pressed into the gutter is a sprig of yew. Its significance is unknown, but considering how much walking she reports in her diary for that summer – almost every day during week 24 (7-12 June)" inscriptionjournal.com/2025/05/12/e...

Always glad to be reminded of work by @shannonmattern.bsky.social in the middle of my day

Louise Seamster@louiseseamster.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I am reading "Maintenance and Care" (2018) by @shannonmattern.bsky.social and it is fantastic!! now aspiring to a summer reading-discussion with my lab placesjournal.org/article/main...

Great British Women Writers Conference experience in Alabama last weekend w/fellow keynoter, the formidable Victorianist Liz Miller; thanks to Nicole Reynolds for the invitation! Slides from my talk in last slide. Sharp-eyed c18 manuscript book researchers will know what’s on the conference poster…

In Alabama to deliver my keynote lecture for the British Women Writers Conference and startled to find that air conditioning is kind of a necessity at this time of year here. And to be “from the North” is a form of alterity.

Excited and honored to be delivering the Annual Fales Lecture at a place dear to my heart, NYU Special Collections. Thank you to the NYU English department and Charlotte Priddle for inviting me back! Hope those of you in New York can come hear me on 4/22, 6-7:30 in North Reading Room, Bobst Library

Happy for, inspired by and proud of @luisacale.bsky.social and her stunning inaugural lecture today. Watched a dear friend reach a career milestone and a truly intermedial scholar share her latest trailblazing work in book history and visual culture. Congratulations Professor Calè!

Scenes and samples from today’s paper making and marbling workshop at Penn State’s wonderful Conservation Centre, led by senior conservator Bill Minter, for my graduate seminar on the materiality of 18th-century life writing. Today’s assigned texts: Adventures of a Quire of Paper &Tristram Shandy

Top 10 of this year's most read pieces — no.5: Julie Park's essay on the early modern fascination with the camera obscura, and the magic, melancholy, and dream-like experiences it produced.: publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-ea... (Full Top 10 here publicdomainreview.org/blog/2025/12...)

🚨🚨🚨 Major announcement!!! I am extremely pleased to announce that HAA is searching for a senior, endowed position in premodern art or architecture. The subfield is wide open. Please spread the word and encourage curious scholars to write to me with questions! 🚨🚨🚨 cfopitt.taleo.net/careersectio...

Am fascinated by this thread and its answers. Helps me make sense of Horace Walpole’s urge to write and publish catalogs of his father’s art collection and the contents of his own home, while offering thoughtful critical truths regarding the purpose of libraries and librarianship

Katie Birkwood@girlinthe.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Library (archives, research) folk, could you give me your best one liners about Why Cataloguing Matters, please? Because sometimes 'Without cataloguing no-one can find or use the stuff' just isn't enough, although it clearly should be. Thank you very. #GLAM #archives #rarebooks #metadata 📚

Like my attempt at a historical costume neckpiece, w/2 pillowcases? For @adamwithbooks.bsky.social ‘s film project. He’s asking us to make short videos of ourselves saying lines from Rousseau’s Confessions while wearing a white Rousseauvian neckpiece. To join in email Adam: adam.smyth@ell.ox.ac.uk

“Johnson says library resources like these aim to level the playing field. ‘The hope is that people use our services to educate and inform themselves, and gain wisdom about any topic under the sun.’”

Heidi@heidilibrarian.bsky.social · 10mo ago

www.npr.org/2023/10/16/1...

C17 commonplace book index belonging to Whitelock Bulstrode (MS 3244, container 1.1) @ransomcenter.bsky.social. Can’t help but think immediately of @djbduncan.bsky.social and his splendid work on the history of the book index

Love that feeling of sudden freedom after meeting a big deadline for a collaborative project begun months ago. Time to make James Beard’s tomato pie recipe just in time before summer ends

I’m definitely going to be watching this space

Elizabeth (Liz) Lehfeldt (she/her/hers)@lizlehfeldt.bsky.social · 12mo ago

So I'm doing a commonplace book assignment with the students in my #earlymodern women's history course this semester. Big thank you to everyone who shared resources and ideas! Watch this space for updates and reflections. #teaching #pedagogy

Margaret Wise Brown, 1910–1952 photo: Philippe Halsman, 1946 Nat'l Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Btwn 1937 & her death in 1952, she authored over 100 books, incl "The Runaway Bunny" (1942), "The Little Island" (1946), and "Goodnight Moon" (1947). She preferred to write with a quill pen. #BookSky 💙📚

Dealing with copyedits for an article and trying not to feel like a patronizing jerk for agreeing to the suggested use of “[sic]” next to a misspelled word in a quoted line

My essay on how the early modern camera obscura brought us more deeply into our interior lives is now live @publicdomainrev.bsky.social publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-ea...

Watching the World in a Dark Room: The Early Modern Camera Obscura

Centuries before photography froze the world into neat frames, scientists, poets, and artists streamed transient images into dark interior spaces with the help of a camera obscura. Julie Park explores...

publicdomainreview.org

He Read (at Least) 3,599 Books in His Lifetime. Now Anyone Can See His List. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/b...

He Read (at Least) 3,599 Books in His Lifetime. Now Anyone Can See His List.

nytimes.com

“Immortality, if considered at all, is less important than more easily achieved goals. Pleasure in the work itself. Usefulness. Kindness. An eagerness and readiness to be of help…” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/o...

Opinion | My Friends Are Immortal to Me

nytimes.com

Finding out that My Dark Room won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2024 award, originally announced last December, is like discovering a gift under the Christmas tree that almost got lost 🎁 🎄📕🎉 @choicereviews.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social www.choice360.org/choice-pick/...

Outstanding Academic Titles 2024: English Literature - Choice 360

Read the latest list snippets from the 2024 Outstanding Academic Titles from Choice 360 and Choice Magazine. This week Outstanding Academic Titles 2024: English Literature

choice360.org

Couldn’t have asked for a more gratifying experience sharing my newest work, on Hester Piozzi’s scrapbook, w/@oxford18thc.bsky.social. Thank you @ballasterros.bsky.social for all you did & said. The napkin covered sandwiches waiting for me at end of talk were delicious. Photo @luisacale.bsky.social

Grateful to the MLA for capturing this special moment of my receiving their 2024 James Russell Lowell Prize honorable mention award from MLA president Tina Lu for My Dark Room at the annual convention's award ceremony in New Orleans @modernlanguage.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

Excited to deliver my paper--based on fresh work for next book Writing’s Maker—"Hester Thrale Piozzi's Minced Meat for Pyes: Scrapbook Composition as Life Writing"--to @oxford18thc.bsky.social next Tuesday. Many thanks to @ballasterros.bsky.social and @davidftaylor.bsky.social for the invitation