Martine van Elk

On 16 Sept 1642 Rosa O'Doherty signed this letter. Here it is for #InternationalWomensDay , 384 years later. This is possibly a unique surviving example of a 17thC signature of a #Gaelic Irishwoman. (The letter is now in @ucdarchives.bsky.social as part of the Franciscan collection)

Thanks for posting this! #earlymodern

Title page of Lord's Supper book about the Eucharist from 1674 with the signature of early owner Anne Hurst at the top.

Angela with the Communion chalice and bread, "Mary Surly her Book" written at the top!

Female Trouble?

At least two women, Mary Surly and Anne Hurst, owned this 1674 book about the Sacrament of Communion. It only took 300 years for female priests to consecrate it themselves!
@newberrylibrary.bsky.social (Case C 823 .859)
#HerBook #WHM

Masthead of the newspaper De Curaçaosche Courant. Reads: "DE CURACAOSCHE COURANT. Deel XL. ZATURDAG den 16den AUGUSTUS, 1823. N. 32. Gedrukt en Zaturdag's morgens uitgegeven door De Weduwe WILLIAM LEE, Drukker voor Zyne Majesteit den Koning der Nederlanden". Available from www.delpher.nl

New publication alert! 🚨 You can now read this Open Access article about women's involvement in #Caribbean #colonialism through their work as print shop owners in #Guadeloupe #StKitts and #Curaçao 1720s-1860s 📰 @silvaperez.bsky.social @heatherfreund.bsky.social muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Friends & colleagues: please allow me in little self-promotion. I'll be in Ghent 25 May-15 June and Leiden 16 June-7 July for research (geopolitics permitting!). If anyone would like me to come talk to their group/class about my 1572 project, I am happy to do so. Just send me a DM. #earlymodern

Yes hope we see each other!

I'm also here with fellow @emwjournal.bsky.social editors @lizlehfeldt.bsky.social and @julieeckerle.bsky.social!#RenSA26

Excited to be in San Francisco for #RenSA26. In a roundtable on minor poets tomorrow and a panel on Dutch women on Saturday with @lindevde.bsky.social @aronouwerkerk.bsky.social and Amanda Pipkin #earlymodern

Barthel Bruyn's people so often seem angry or depressed. Even the children. No cheer from Von Gail family! Cologne was a sad place in the 1550s.

Colleagues, especially those in CA and in the California State University, please sign this petition. I know you've all heard the bleak news stories about our AI debacle (because people are always bringing the stories to me)!

#HerBook #earlymodern

#StealingIsntInnovation

Graphic provided by The Authors Guild.

Early Modern Women

It's Universal Letter Writing Week. This article from Early Modern Women studies how letter writing by women helped preserve family history in early modern Italy. Read here: https://ow.ly/z72250XK0tF

This week's Early Modern Female Book Ownership blog features a religious book owned by possibly Devonian female owners. #HerBook

a religious *book* 🤦

@memps.bsky.social, @erinannmcc.bsky.social; @tarallyons.bsky.social; @michelinewhite.bsky.social

Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reede, and Smoaking Flax (1631) This second edition copy of theologian Richard Sibbes’s The Bruised Reede, and Smoaking Flax (1631) contains the ownership inscriptions of two early modern women named Martha. The book was original…

In our first blog post of 2026, @franceswolfreston.bsky.social discusses a religious books with some unusual inscriptions by one or two early modern women named Martha earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/r... #HerBook #C17 #EarlyModern

AI Is Inventing Academic Papers That Don't Exist -- And They're Being Cited in Real Journals Academic articles from authors using large language model are creating an ecosystem of fake research that threatens human knowledge itself.

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

This is such a good #HerBook read on the formidable Bathsua Makin. Showcasing her in a different light by the discovery of books attributed to her, it also touches on the female influence on children via book gifts, a subject I’ve been tipping away at via findings from our website!

This is the most prominent case, but not the only one. I worry a lot about already precarious institutions whose admins are bedazzled by the shiny promises and magical thinking surrounding AI and mortgage themselves to it. And all it will do is make them circle the drain faster.

More amazing work from @tamarajatkin.bsky.social on Bathsua Makin's books. I'm especially interested in the book that she inscribed "B. Makin." On the open market, without a scholar's eye, this is the type of inscription that could easily be mistaken for a man's. #HerBook

Bathsua Reginal Makin’s Books at Dulwich College, London By Tamara Atkin In a blog post earlier this year, I announced the discovery of a book once owned by the ten-year-old Bathsua Reginal Makin, scholar and teacher, who in the 1640s was tutor to Prince…

Delighted to have a brand new post from @tamarajatkin.bsky.social with some excellent research on more books owned by Bathsua Makin; the picture of Makin as a writer is becoming more complex with each discovery earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/11/24/b... #EarlyModern #HerBook

Annunciation. So clean and clear, as Giovanni Bellini is wont to be. Today is his day.

💪

I'd read it!

Reposting this. If you're interested in the early modern Low Countries, these are the people to follow.
#earlymodern

@franceswolfreston.bsky.social; @memps2.bsky.social; @erinannmcc.bsky.social; @tarallyons.bsky.social; @michelinewhite.bsky.social

Bathsua Reginal Makin’s Books at Dulwich College, London By Tamara Atkin In a blog post earlier this year, I announced the discovery of a book once owned by the ten-year-old Bathsua Reginal Makin, scholar and teacher, who in the 1640s was tutor to Prince…

Delighted to have a brand new post from @tamarajatkin.bsky.social with some excellent research on more books owned by Bathsua Makin; the picture of Makin as a writer is becoming more complex with each discovery earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2025/11/24/b... #EarlyModern #HerBook

Postcard of Stack as Hamlet, looking thoughtful

The actor playing Hamlet looks like William Stack, but that may be too early a production:

This website might be helpful: theatricalia.com