“How-to knowledge” is instructional knowledge: it emerges when we solve problems, when we find functional answers to complex questions. The second workshop within the British-German collaborative project Take Me and Make It Happen!—jointly organized by the University of Glasgow and the Herzog August Library – addresses in nine contributions from various perspectives the practical challenges arising from bodily care, health maintenance, and household management.

We will engage with questions that are both simple and tricky: What ingredients do I need for an effective medicine? How do I prepare food that tastes good? How can I look more beautiful and youthful? How can I make the most efficient use of my limited resources? In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, numerous small and cheap books appeared on the market that promised to show precisely this – how it’s done, how to do it.

In addition, the workshop invites reflection on the early practical manual as a medium, addressing questions of layout and traces of use. Marginal notes – ranging from the rebellious to the satirical – bring the reading practices of these sources vividly to life. Many household guides, moreover, were individualized compilations: unique volumes that, shaped by their owners’ tastes, generated distinctive constellations of neighboring texts.

Online access: https://herzogaugustbibliothek.my.webex.com/herzogaugustbibliothek.my/j.php?MTID=mf955b596ba7b60dfdef8d717fb6ebb2f

Image description: Hannah Woolley, Frauen-Zimmers Zeit-Vertreib Oder Reiches Gemach von außerlesenen Experimenten und Curiositäten (…) Hamburg: Benjamin Schiller, 1697, Frontispiz und Titelblatt, HAB Xb 12° 615..