Congratulations to the 2026-2027 recipients of the John ‘Bud’ Velde Graduate Fellowship: Megi Mecolli, Camellia Paul, and Sophie Weinberg! Read on to learn more about what RBML’s Velde Graduate Fellows are up to this academic year. Megi Mecolli My project is centered on transcribing Pre-1650 MS 0102, the “Crafte of Conjureynge” manuscript, an Elizabethan spellbook […]
Tag: history of printing
Velde Graduate Fellows
September 29, 2026
Tortoise of Varied Voice
March 4, 2026
By Elissa B.G. Mullins Shabbily clad in contemporary quarter calfskin, this newly cataloged “tortoise of varied voice” (Post-1650 MS 0608) contains a trove of unpublished occasional and epistolary verse, translations from (and into) Latin, Greek, and French, and Biblical paraphrases in the elegant hand of William Massey of Norwich (1691*-1764?), English Quaker and scholar. The […]
Livre de Prières : Tissé d’après les Enluminures des manuscrits du XIVe au XVIe siècle
July 23, 2025
By Molly Banwart and Caroline Szylowicz Have you ever seen a book made entirely of silk? One item getting a lot of reading room attention recently is this French Livre de Prières: Tissé d’après les enluminures des manuscrits du XIVe au XVIe siècle (242.802 H446l). This book was manufactured with the Jacquard process, which relied […]
Wynkyn de Worde’s “The boke of Chaucer named Caunterbury tales”
April 5, 2019
written by Katie Funderburg Although less momentous than William Caxton’s first edition and certainly less ornate than the later Kelmscott Chaucer, Wynkyn de Worde’s The boke of Chaucer named Caunterbury tales (Incunabula Q. 821 C39c 1498) provides valuable insight into early English print history. As one of the most prolific English printers at the turn […]
Books of Hours: Devotional and Decorative Practices
February 19, 2019
written by Katie Funderburg Developing out of increased veneration of the Virgin Mary that occurred throughout Western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Books of Hours are devotional texts that allowed the average person to model their daily approach to worship after the ordained clergy. The genre receives its name from the organizational structure of […]