*this, ugh

I'd fight you on thus, but I want all of that discarded filling!

I think it's telling that when I asked our Special Collections Librarian (a visual culture specialist) if I could use their facilities to make a high-quality scan, she said "those prints are SO WEIRD!" before I told her anything about the actual print, haha

Haha, agree that it's just a kerchief!! (and with the dating! This series was advertised in London in the 1840s, but a lot of material from the 1830s and earlier appears to have been really popular)

Ah, yes, I think you did find it!

It's a single print containing a number of different (mostly surreal) pornographic scenes, incl an anthropomorphized penis playing blind man's bluff (it wears some contraption that *could* be interpreted as a strainer)

TOTALLY!

Thanks for this thread — it puts so well what I've wanted to communicate with students (especially in my intro methods/projects course)! xx

Yeah, I totally get that.

I agree that we need more reminders than ever that there are stories that the text alone doesn't tell.

grown, I think — it's tangible in a way a transcription is not).

I've spent years chasing 19thC publishers who left no archives, or left handwritten ledgers on shitty paper that flooding half-destroyed. Digitized material can offer ways to see parts of their work that I really appreciate. BUT+

Those are some beautiful documents!

I know I posted about this the other day with excitement, but I, for one, am not stopping going to archives or taking my students to Special Collections any time soon for exactly these reasons. (Plus, for students, interest in this kind of evidence has only +