Volume 72 Issue 9 September 2022

N.E.S.A. Hamilton. "An inquiry into the genuineness of the manuscript corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collier’s annotated Shakspere, folio, 1632: and of certain Shaksperian documents likewise published by Mr. Collier." Special Collections, University of Delaware Library.

Death of a Master Forger

John Payne Collier died on 17 September 1883, after a lifetime of creating deliberate fictions, falsehoods and forgeries.

 17th-century manicule and notes in the margin of translations of Aristotle. Courtesy of the Penn Library.

Filling the Gaps

Notes in the margins of early modern books can be very revealing about their readers’ lives and interests. 

Ben Jones

Sri Lanka’s Deep Wounds

Sri Lanka’s historic ethnic divisions were forged during British colonisation and a bloody civil war. Could the current crisis help unify a divided country? 

wilson

Assassin’s Creed

Was the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson the ‘murder that triggered the Irish Civil War’?

Cenci

The Face of Beatrice Cenci

The painting that inspired Shelley and Stendahl is thought to be of a young woman executed on 11 September 1599 for the murder of her father.

Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, by Benjamin West, c.1816.

Knobs or Points?

Is lightning natural or divine? Opinion split royalists and republicans.