Mark Empey

They’ll all be copying Kneecap next by wearing Union Jack balaclavas

Are you curious about the potential for archival practices to shape the study of emotion; why there are letters in the English State Papers labelled 'mad'; or how the culture & politics of Elizabethan England shaped people's experience of distress? Find out here! doi.org/10.1017/S008... #earlymodern

You could add “obviously” and maybe “inevitably” to a list of hated academic phrases, which I fear could grow quite quickly if I put further thought on this debate

Can’t help but be engrossed by this. Not just the quality or attention to detail but how the desk is presented, the meticulous research, the anguish of research (??), and the hints de Heem left for the viewer to interpret and reflect on. Fabulous

You may not be interested in Maelsechlainn Mór.

You may even not be interested in the magnificence that is the Annals of the Four Masters, compiled by ridiculously talented Irish Franciscans under challenging conditions.

But please don’t tell me you aren’t impressed by work of this scribe 😍

Secrets of a 1569 letter: how books defied borders? The power of partnerships in the 16th century Rosenn Nicolas, University of Galway1 Figure 1: Introduction of the letter The Plantin Moretus Museum keeps an original letter exposing unusual facts about the people involved in the printing spher…

✉️ We're back from our summer break with a new blogpost by Rosenn Nicolas (Galway),exploring a letter to Christopher Plantin that shows how 16th-century European book production depended on networks of publishers,printers, & intermediaries,shaped by commerce and censorship.
#REBPAF #MSCA #BookHistory

Canoes in the Early English Caribbean: The Role of an Indigenous Technology in Making Mercantilism Work* Abstract. The Caribbean, with its focus on cash crop production, played a major role in the rise of England’s Atlantic trading system and the making of mod

Fascinating article by Nuala Zahedieh about the centrality of canoes in early colonial exploitation 🗃️https://academic.oup.com/past/advance-article/doi/10.1093/pastj/gtaf021/8231030

Just discovering this database of books as symbols in Renaissance art--a wonderful resource #EarlyModern #HerBook basiraproject.org

Positive news! Something we all need to hear. Many congratulations

So much to unpack from Joe’s wonderful #HerBook post on Lady Bindloss’s purchase records. As he astutely notes, such records “help situate book ownership within a broader story of the networks and market mechanisms through which books moved from printer to seller to buyer”.

WELL worth the read 👇👇

Sir Edward Osborne reported that the assassin, Felton, demanded his pay ‘so peremptorily (with his hatt on) of the Duke, as he kickt him, whereuppon he stabd him in the back, leaving him butt soe much time as to say “villaine thou hast slaine me” and soe died’. The DRAMA

Conference: Women and the Household in the Early Modern Book Trade | Museum Plantin-Moretus The aim of this two-day conference is to share knowledge of women’s rich and varied lives and works in the period before the rapid industrialisation of book production which changed the face of home l...

REGISTRATION OPEN!

Now more than ever, research is reshaping our view of women’s roles in the early modern book trade. Join us in Antwerp (5–7 Nov 2025) for our conference Women & the Household in the #earlymodern Book Trade.

Register here: tinyurl.com/womenbooktrade

#rarebooks #bookhistory 💙📚📜

One for you @alanford56.bsky.social

Sir James Ware's notes from The Register of St Werburgh's in Chester in which he creates a list archdeacons who served in Irish dioceses in the medieval period

Sir James Ware's notes from The Register of St Werburgh's in Chester in which he creates a list archdeacons who served in Irish dioceses in the medieval period

Always fascinated by #17thc historians and how they structured and took notes of their research.

Here's an example of the Irish historian, Sir James Ware, trawling through the Register of St Werburgh's in #Chester and listing archdeacons who served in Irish dioceses in the #medieval period

Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707-1819 Reframes the study of Welsh cultural revivalism, highlighting transnational and imperial contexts.

Publication day!!

Find out how C18th Welsh cultural revivalism positioned itself within an expanding British Empire and a newly-minted British state. Includes Welsh sources on slavery/abolition, settler colonialism, Indigenous America, and more

🚨🚨🚨 35% off all formats with the code BB135 🚨🚨🚨

But will you ever get a full night of sleep? Once the munchkins settle down you'll be having nightmares for the next ten years worrying about them going to Copper Face Jacks, and then another five years petrified at what they might be doing there. Following that it's grandchildren staying over

This volume is a much needed contribution to the wider #bookhistory community, specifically as it places an emphasis on indigenous language and its responses to the rapidly changing colonial and printed world. It also complements the #earlymodern volume 3 brilliantly

Very exciting: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography published a cluster of new entries on women stationers. See the intro by Valerie Wayne: www.oxforddnb.com/newsitem/906...

ODNB entries are so helpful in identifying women from traces on printed material. So happy to see this work ❤️

📣John Locke’s Forgotten Manuscript

We are thrilled to announce that @davidrarmitage.bsky.social's
article on his discovery of a new John Locke manuscript is out now👇

It sheds new light on Locke's practical involvement in political economy & his engagement with Ireland 📜🗃️

Bríd McGrath - Irish Manuscripts Bríd at the launch of her edition in Clonmel in June 2006. It is with great sadness that we have learned of the death of Dr Bríd McGrath, editor of four IMC editions. On behalf of the Chair and member...

It's very sad to have the news of Bríd McGrath's death. She was an indefatigable editor for @irishmanuscripts.bsky.social

See our tribute to her here:

www.irishmanuscripts.ie/brid-mcgrath/

We are delighted to announce that a full programme and registration for the 35th Irish Conference of Historian is now available. Maynooth University, 12-13 September.

Please share widely.

www.eventbrite.com/e/35th-irish...

A number of Four Courts Press books can now be borrowed on archive.org. Four Courts is a key publisher of works on Irish history, and this means some out of print edited collections on early modern history are now more readily available. And you can read some of my articles there too! For example:

😂 😂

If you want another brilliant article on women spies have a read of @jimoneillnyw.bsky.social work on their influence in the Nine Years War in Ireland - a war that bankrupted Elizabeth. This was one of the most popular articles I used in my course on the Tudor state

muse.jhu.edu/article/8386...

@clodaghtait.bsky.social ? Or you might know someone else?

The programme looked brilliant. One of the great frustrations about early modern women book history is that the specialists are spread across the globe and it’s so hard getting so many brilliant people together in one room

A manuscript copy of Edmund Campion’s Two bokes of the Histories of Ireland with evidence of numerous names of contemporary readers

A manuscript copy of Edmund Campion’s #16thc ‘Two bokes of the Histories of Ireland’. The many names on the title page provide a fascinating insight into its popularity and how widely circulated Campion’s work was before Sir James Ware published it in 1633 #bookhistory

10 Aug 1636: The Annals of the Four Masters/ Annála Ríoghachta Éireann are completed & signed on this day #otd The great 17thC annalistic source for the history of the island of #Ireland (Here is the signature page from @ucdarchives.bsky.social s UCD-OFM Ms A13).

A close-up of a decorated initial P, with human and zoomorphic figures, in the early medieval Insular style, from the St Gall Priscian. Some of Priscian's Latin text is visible as are interlinear and marginal glosses in Old Irish.

A close-up of a letter P in a highly decorated and colourful style characteristic of early medieval Insular Gospel books, with dots, geometric designs and zoomorphic figures.

A highly decorative early medieval Irish Gospel book, open at the beginning of the Gospel of John: "In principio erat uerbum ...", with interlace and zoomorphic designs.

Four manuscript fragments, dated to the seventh century, which formed part of the earliest known copy of Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae.

If you're in Dublin between now and late October, don't miss the Words on the Wave exhibition at the National Museum on Kildare St. Some of our most important medieval Irish manuscripts are on loan from the Abbey of St Gallen & are back in Ireland for the first time in c. 1200 years. #MedievalSky