Table Of ContentEarly Modern English Marginalia
Marginalia in early modern and medieval texts – printed, handwrit-
ten, drawn, scratched, colored, and pasted in – offer a glimpse of how
people, as individuals and in groups, interacted with books and manu-
scripts over often lengthy periods of time. The chapters in this volume
build on earlier scholarship that established marginalia as an intellec-
tual method (Grafton and Jardine), as records of reading motivated
by cultural, social, theological, and personal inclinations (Brayman
[Hackel] and Orgel), and as practices inspired by material affordances
particular to the book and the pen (Fleming and Sherman). They fur-
ther the study of the practices of marginalia as a mode – a set of ways
in which material opportunities and practices overlap with intellectual,
social, and personal motivations to make meaning in the world. They
introduce us to a set of idiosyncratic examples such as the trace marks
of objects left in books, deliberately or by accident; cut-and-pasted ad-
ditions to printed volumes; a marriage depicted through shared book
ownership. They reveal to us in case studies the unique value of mar-
ginalia as evidence of phenomena as important and diverse as religious
change, authorial self- invention, and the history of the literary canon.
The chapters of this book go beyond the case study, however, and raise
broad historical, cultural, and theoretical questions about the strange,
marvelous, metamorphic thing we call the book, and the equally mul-
tiplicitous, eccentric, and inscrutable beings who accompany them
through history: readers and writers.
Katherine Acheson is Professor of English Language and Literature and
a senior administrator at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Her
work includes Visual Rhetoric and Early Modern English Literature,
also published in this series. Her recent scholarship is about the ways in
which the visual features of early modern printed literature constructed
reading experience, generic categories, and literary value.
Material Readings in Early Modern Culture
Series editors: James Daybell, Plymouth University, UK, and Adam
Smyth, Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK
The series provides a forum for studies that consider the material forms
of texts as part of an investigation into the culture of early modern
England. The editors invite proposals of a multi- or interdisciplinary na-
ture, and particularly welcome proposals that combine archival research
with an attention to theoretical models that might illuminate the read-
ing, writing, and making of texts, as well as projects that take innovative
approaches to the study of material texts, both in terms of the kinds of
primary materials under investigation, and in terms of methodologies.
What are the questions that have yet to be asked about writing in its
various possible embodied forms? Are there varieties of materiality that
are critically neglected? How does form mediate and negotiate content?
In what ways do the physical features of texts inform how they are read,
interpreted and situated?
Print Letters in Seventeenth-Century England
Politics, Religion, and News Culture
Gary Schneider
Singing the News
Ballads in Mid-Tudor England
Jenni Hyde
Text, Food And The Early Modern Reader
Eating Words
Jason Scott-Warren and Andrew Zurcher
Reading Drama in Tudor England
Tamara Atkin
Early Modern English Marginalia
Edited by Katherine Acheson
For more information on this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/literature/series/ASHSER2222
Early Modern English
Marginalia
Edited by
Katherine Acheson
First published 2019
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Katherine Acheson to be identified as the author
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Acheson, Katherine O., 1963- editor.
Title: Early modern English marginalia / edited by Katherine
Acheson.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. | Series: Material
readings in early modern culture | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018043545 (print) |
LCCN 2018054250 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Marginalia—England—History—16th century. |
Marginalia—England—History—17th century. | Books and
reading—England—History—16th century. | Books and
reading—England—History—17th century. | Early printed
books—England—16th century. | Early printed books—
England—17th century. | English literature—Early modern,
1500–1700—Criticism, Textual. | Manuscripts,
English—Editing.
Classification: LCC Z1003.5.G7 (ebook) | LCC Z1003.5.G7
E27 2018 (print) | DDC 028/.90942—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018043545
ISBN: 978-0-415-41885-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-22881-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments xi
Notes on Contributors xiii
Introduction: Marginalia, Reading, and Writing 1
KATHERINE ACHESON
SECTIoN 1
Materialities 13
1 Reading Habits and Reading Habitats; or, toward an
Ecobibliography of Marginalia 15
JOSHUA CALHOUN
2 Cut-and-Paste Bookmaking: The Private/Public Agency
of Robert Nicolson 35
JASON SCOTT-WARREN
3 Book Marks: object Traces in Early Modern Books 51
ADAM SMYTH
4 The occupation of the Margins: Writing, Space, and
Early Modern Women 70
KATHERINE ACHESON
SECTIoN 2
Selves 91
5 Praying in the Margins across the Reformation: Readers’
Marks in Early Tudor Books of Hours 93
ELIZABETH PATTON
vi Contents
6 Articles of Assent: Clergymen’s Subscribed Copies of the
Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England 115
AUSTEN SAUNDERS
7 Lady Anne Clifford Reads John Selden 134
GEORGIANNA ZIEGLER
8 Marital Marginalia: The Seventeenth-Century Library of
Thomas and Isabella Hervey 155
EMMA SMITH
SECTIoN 3
Modes 173
9 Studied for Redaction? Reading and Writing in the
Works of John Higgins 175
HARRIET ARCHER
10 Vide Supplementum: Early Modern Collation as
Play-Reading in the First Folio 195
CLAIRE M. L. BOURNE
11 Early Modern Marginalia and #earlymoderntwitter 234
SJOERD LEVELT
Afterword 257
ALAN STEWART
Bibliography 267
Index 291
List of Figures
1.1 Depiction of the sizing room, a crucial space in
early hand papermaking operations. Plate XI from
“Papeterie,” in d’Alembert and Diderot’s Encylopédie,
vol. 5 (Plates), Paris, 1767 25
1.2 The Bible (1580), Folger STC 2129, Ii3r 29
2.1 Nicolson’s marginal marks in Christof Wirsung,
Praxis medicinae universalis (1598), Folger STC
25863, cs1292, T3v (p. 294) 41
2.2 Nicolson’s pasted and manuscript additions to Christof
Wirsung, Praxis medicinae universalis (1598), Folger
STC 25863, cs1292, fols 2D2v (p. 420), 2S1v (p. 642),
and rear pastedown 42
2.3 Title-page of Nicolson’s manuscript addition to
Lodowick Lloyd, The First Part of the Diall of Daies
(London: Roger Ward, 1590), Bodleian Library 4°
Rawl. 140 (1) 45
3.1 Shakespeare’s Works (1623), Thomas Fisher Rare
Book Library.S52 A1 1623f, 395 53
3.2 Les Oeuvres de Charles Loyseau (Paris, 1640), 133.
Hendrik Conscience Library EHC 714330 56
3.3 William Shakespeare, Works (1623), Folger First Folio
63, Tragedies, 298 62
3.4 John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1596), Ohio State
University, BR1600.F6 1596, copy 1, 366–7 63
4.1 Henoch Clapham, Briefe of the Bibles history (1639),
Folger STC 5335, front endpaper 75
4.2 The Bible: That is, the Holy Scriptures Contained in
the Old and New Testament (1580), Folger STC 2190,
blank verso at the end of the New Testament 77
4.3 Theodore Beze, Iob Expounded (1589?), Folger STC
2764 copy 1, n.s.4v 78
4.4 John Mayer, The English Catechisme Explained
(1623), Folger STC 17734; rear flyleaf 78
4.5 Book of Common Prayer (1632), Folger STC 16386
copy 2, sig. B4r 79
viii List of Figures
4.6 The Bible: That is, the Holy Scriptures Contained in
the Old and New Testament (1603), Folger STC 2190,
p. 43 of the New Testament 79
4.7 The Bible (1580), Folger STC 2129, p. 75 of the
New Testament 81
5.1 Hore presentes ad vsum Sarum (Paris, 1502), Folger
STC 15897, fol. Q8r 95
5.2 Officium Beate Marie Virginis ad vsum Sarum
(Vostre, 1512), Folger STC 15913, sig. C3r 96
5.3 Officium Beate Marie Virginis ad vsum Sarum
(Vostre, 1512), Folger STC 15913, sig. F8r 97
5.4 Hore Beatissime virginis marie ad legitimum
Sarisburiensis Ecclesie ritum (Paris, 1530), Folger STC
15968, fol. 54r 99
5.5 Hore beatissime virginis marie ad legitimum
Sarisburiensis ecclesie ritum (Paris, 1534), Folger STC
15984, fol. 54r 100
5.6 Hore Beatissime virginis marie ad legitimum
Sarisburiensis Ecclesie ritum (Paris, 1530), Folger STC
15968, n.p. (endpage with printer’s mark) 102
5.7 Hore beatissime virginis marie ad legitimum
Sarisburiensis ecclesie ritum (Paris, 1594) British
Library. Shelfmark C.35.e.11, n.p 103
5.8 Hore beatissime virginis marie ad legitimum
Sarisburiensis ecclesie ritum (Paris, 1594) British
Library. Shelfmark C.35.e.11, n.p 104
5.9 A goodly prymer in englyshe (London, 1538), Folger
STC 15998, Sig. Q1r 107
5.10 A goodly prymer in englyshe (London, 1538), Folger
STC 15998, sig. X1r 108
5.11 John Bydell for William Marshall. A goodly prymer in
englyshe (London, 1535). British Library. Shelfmark
C.25.gc, sig. A8v 110
6.1 Thirty-Nine Articles (1633) Bodleian 4o 277(4), sig. A1r 124
6.2 Thirty-Nine Articles (1640) Bodleian 4o 277(6), sig. A1v 128
7.1 Detail of Lady Anne Clifford’s inscription on the title
page of John Selden, Titles of Honor (London, 1631),
Folger Folio STC 22178 copy 3 135
7.2 Detail of annotated page 594 from Selden, Titles of
Honor, Folger STC 22178 copy 3 137
7.3 Detail of p. 878 mentioning Anne Rochford (Boleyn)
from Selden, Titles of Honor, Folger STC 22178 copy 3 145
7.4 Detail of p. 539 with added reference to Montaigne’s
Essays from Selden, Titles of Honor, Folger STC
22178 copy 3 149
List of Figures ix
7.5 Details of p. 412 with mention of Ben Jonson and
p. 413 showing bayleaf and bookmark from Selden,
Titles of Honor, Folger STC 22178 copy 3 150
8.1 Thomas Hervey’s inscription marking Isabella’s death,
on a copy of Henry Hammond’s The Power of the
Keyes (1647) 160
8.2 A previously owned copy of Calvin’s Institutes (1561),
reinscribed for Tho:& Isabella Hervey 161
10.1 A note to the reader to see the “supple,” (or,
“supplement”) for missing lines (sig. Oo1r) 196
10.2 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. G6v 199
10.3 Examples of marginal brackets in the Free Library of
Philadelphia’s First Folio: The Tempest (sig. A2v) and
Romeo & Juliet (sig. ff1r) 200
10.4 Changes made to the text of the Folio by the earlier of
two hands in light-brown ink 201
10.5 Prologue to Romeo & Juliet, transcribed on the last
page of Titus Andronicus 202
10.6 Images of the Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio
binding 204
10.7 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. pp5r 204
10.8 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. A5r 205
10.9 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. ff3r 209
10.10 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. ff6r 210
10.11 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. ff5r 211
10.12 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. ff6r 212
10.13 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. ff6r 213
10.14 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. ff3r 214
10.15 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. ff4v 215
10.16 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. ee6v 216
10.17 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. pp2r 220
10.18 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sigs.
nn5r and nn6r 221
10.19 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. pp2r 222
10.20 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. pp2r 222
10.21 The Free Library of Philadelphia’s First Folio, sig. F5r 223
11.1 A small doodle of a bird, in the margin between
woodcuts of an early printed book, tweeted with the
hashtag #MarginaliaMonday 235
11.2 Tweets, one from a rare books librarian (top), and one
from a researcher involved in coding of digitized early
modern marginalia, using the hashtag #marginaliamonday 236
11.3 Tweet of an image of pen trials on a pastedown in a
binding, including a series of manicules, tweeted with
hashtag #manicule 238
