Leon Jackson

It’s interesting that the 1610 hand looks more ‘modern’ than either the 1590 or the 1640, at least to me. I miss doing Early Modern paleography!

I totally see that. The 1590s example clearly looks like Secretary Hand to me. Not sure what you’d call the 1610 version, but, yes, wildly different in look and feel. Thank you so much for this!

Exactly this!

Ha, yes!

From Secretary hand to Italic?

The only work I'm aware of that really gets at this from the point of view of typography/materiality is John Nerone and Kevin Barnhurt's The Form of News (2001) which book historians have mostly ignored because it comes out of media history. Hadn't thought about bank ledgers, tho. That's brilliant!

Some of this is objective, but more of it feels subjective: matters of style-as-mediated. It makes me wonder if some shifts are more dramatic than others, like punctuated equilibria. Machine made paper, steel nibs, printed blanks all make a difference in the early C19.

I spent 6 hours reading records from 1816-1819, then moved back to 1804. Same court, same procedures. But the paper was different: heavier, but smaller; script was different; no printed blanks: everything was handwritten. Even the twine the bundles were wrapped in was different: thinner, cheap.

Whenever my archival research moves back a decade or forward a decade (c1790s-1830s), the shift in style of language, handwriting, or materiality of documents or documentation seems pronounced. Do other scholars notice this too? Ten years but different worlds, it seems 🗃️

One of my favorite novels! Absolutely entrancing.

What beautiful pictures. Your pup is lovely!

Oh yes. At three she's still pretty goofy!

I'm so sorry. Maybe she'll give you really good drugs!

Please call them, Jocelyn! Better safe than sorry!

Just saw this, but I’m so sorry, Martin. Keeping my fingers crossed that you catch a break.

That's a very good cat right there!

I love your little flock so much! Seeing them boosts my spirits more than I can say!

I managed 130 footnotes in my last BH essay! 😈

I mean, she’s all grown up now, but still . . .

A black retriever puppy in the grass, retrieving a pink foam stress ball

A tiny black retriever mix puppy stands on a wooden stairway. She has just learned to climb them, and she looks happy and proud.

A tiny black retriever mix puppy with fuzzy earmuffs sits in the grass.

A tiny black retriever mix puppy sits in the grass, her earmuffs are larger and fuzzier than the last picture. She looks serious. I mean she isn’t, but for a moment she feigned seriousness.

The world is terrible, but not *everything* in the world is terrible. Proof? Puppies! Mine, specifically, but all the other puppies too, and especially yours, if you have one. If you don’t, I’m happy to share! #tinyjoys #uglydogs

Thank you! I needed this!

Have just downloaded Sarah's BH article, and 👀 is right!!!

It's not impossible to use parenthetical citations for deeply archival work built from hundreds of sources, but documenting it would be excruciating, and reading it scarcely less so. Since PMLA is (duh) in MLA style, it's simply not going to be congenial to people who don't *think* in that format.

Oh, same! I've only published one or two articles using MLA style; it's just too onerous. Parenthetical citations were designed for disciplines where the reader either already knows the canon of scholarship, or where the number of scholars cited is few enough that it can be memorized.

It has always been my opinion that the constraints of MLA, or, honestly, any short-form parenthetical citation style, has done more to militate against the engagement of literary scholars with full on historical work (or historicism, if you must) than any other identifiable factor.

It very much gets them, believe me!

No archive complete without one!

That’s incredible! Chester is a commoner, but noble in heart!

Beautiful!

The tug of war between reading archival materials and petting the archive dog is constant 🗃️