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Author: Alina Lange

How-to Books, and How to Bond. Field Notes from My Trip to Glasgow.

On paper, my trip to Glasgow was all about research in the Ferguson Collection. Steff’s assignment was clear: he wanted me to take a “deep dive into the sources” and so I arrived equipped with my analytical goggles and an extra air tank that would allow me to submerge myself…

Once More, with Feeling: A ‘Sober’ Reappraisal of How-to Sources  

In my recently deceased mother’s belongings, amongst many other things, I found a recipe collection. The recipes were outdated; the booklet consisted of collectible cards illustrated with faded photos from the 90s. Some recipes were handwritten, scribbled down by different hands (including that of my 10-year-old self). Others bore witness…

How to Smell the Past

In front of the Wolfenbüttel castle, there is a pillar that allows you to smell the past.   Its caption reads: “Haben Sie Lust auf eine kleine Zeitreise? Hier in dieses große Schloss zog Gotthold Ephraim Lessing mit einem Diener ein, als er 1770 nach Wolfenbüttel kam. Wie mag das…

‘Beauty to Go’ – Two Cosmetics Handbooks from the Ferguson Collection

On our recent trip to Glasgow, I had the pleasure of inspecting the Ferguson collection on site. As it ties in with my broader interest in early modern deformity, I chose to examine some of its handbooks on beauty and cosmetics. Two of them I would like to introduce today…

“What’s cooking, Nara Smith?” Culinary Comedy: Online Recipes and Their Parodies

As our project shows, cooking recipes have a long history and their relevance is not declining. Today, the internet and social media provide a seemingly endless well of cooking recipes. Online platforms containing recipes reach from food blogs, by celebrity chefs or laypeople, to Instagram accounts dedicated to the how-to…

How to establish a new book genre; or, are how-to books literature?

We tend to think of the how-to book as a straightforward, unadorned text type. Brevity is its hallmark and plain language its virtue, all in the service of practical implementation. How-to texts are functional texts, they do not lay claim to artistic brilliance. Or do they? When we talk of…