Category: 17th century

How to Find Marginalia in Printed Books (so that you can request photos through BookMark!)

On By Kathy AchesonIn 17th century, Method, OtherLeave a comment

…or rather How to Find the Possibility of Marginalia in Printed Books to Which You Do Not Have Access! If you don’t happen to live or work in the region of a rare books repository, you may be able to get leads about the existence and sometimes nature of marginalia from library catalogues. First, we need the catalogue to have a field for notes about the particular copy. Copy-specific notes can include information about provenance and history (such as re-binding, repair, etc.), and can also include a brief description or transcription of manuscript additions, such as ownership claims, prices, gift inscriptions, and marginalia. These catalogue notes will not be exhaustive, but a book with marginalia in it is likely to have something recorded in that field that might lead us to believe there is material there for us. Most library catalogues (including my own institution’s) do not have a field that includes such notes, but many rare books library catalogues do: this blog post focusses on the catalogues of the Folger Shakespeare Library and the libraries of Oxford University and mentions those of the Newberry and the Huntington.

Library catalogues that include copy-specific notes tend to be customized to the needs of the collections. The way that they record marginalia or other supplements to printed books that we might be interested in differs from library to library and even from cataloguer to cataloguer. You can always start by talking or writing to a librarian for advice: I learned the basics from Georgianna Ziegler at the Folger Shakespeare Library. (Dr. Ziegler is now retired but is still very active as a scholar: “Little Books, Big Gifts: The Artistry of Esther Inglis” is her latest project). 

I’m going to start with the Folger Shakespeare Library, as I’m most familiar with it. I’ve gone to the Folger Library’s site, then to “Research” on the top nav bar; from the drop-down menu you can go to “Search the Catalog.” Once there, I select “Advanced Search” from the bottom line of text. This option which will allow me to search multiple fields, connected by Boolean operators such as “and” or “not.” I’ve built a search that is shown in the image below which asks for items that fulfill the following criteria: one, they include the word “health” in the title; two, the title does NOT include the term “electronic resource” (for those of you who use Early English Books Online, you’ll know that the works in EEBO are included within the catalogues of institutions that subscribe to the resource); and three, under “Date type,” I’ve restricted my results to items that “published/created” in a “specific time period” between 1600 and 1620. You can do this search yourself to follow along.

Figure 1

We have some results here! 16 titles, some of which are represented in multiple copies in the Folger’s collection. This is a manageable number for me to sift through; in each entry, I’ll be looking at the “Folger-specific notes.” The first title on the list (The hauen of health : chiefly made for the comfort of students, and consequently for all those that haue a care of their health, amplified vpon fiue words of Hippocrates, written Epid. 6. Labour, meat, drinke, sleepe, Venus: by Thomas Cogan, Master of Artes, and Bacheler of Physicke: and now of late corrected and augmented. Hereunto is added a preseruation from the pestilence: with a short censure of the late sicknesse at Oxford.) is represented in three copies in the Folger’s collection. Each of these copies has a Folger-specific note in the catalogue record.  

Figure 2

The notes for the Folger copies of The hauen of health tell us that there are provenance notes in the first copy, which may or may not interest us (provenance refers to the history of ownership of the item). The key for marginalia hunters is the term “manuscript notes,” which can be abbreviated as “ms notes.” For copies two and three, we see that there are manuscript notes in the books. These might or might not be marginalia that interests you; we can’t tell from the catalogue. This is when you might place a request in BookMark: the call number, the title, and your confidence the book might have marginalia in it are all you need. Your correspondent – the person who fields the request through BookMark on the basis that they have access to the Folger’s collections – will request the book be made available to them in the reading room, look through it for marginalia, photograph the marginalia, and send the photos to you by email or file transfer service. That’s it. 

Most rare books library catalogues will have a searchable field for the copy-specific notes. Here’s another example. The Oxford Universities catalogue includes rare book holdings in college libraries and in the Bodleian Library. Excluding electronic copies is different than in the Folger catalogue. In SOLO, on the left nav bar, there is a set of filters including “resource type.” If you select “physical resources” and then apply the filter, you will exclude electronic versions. Our search is for “health” in the title, and a publication date between 1600-1620, inclusive. The search results list 13 items, some of which are available in multiple copies. 

SOLO aggregates the library catalogues of all the Oxford College and University libraries. If we open the record for this title, The treasurie of hidden secrets (1600), we see there are two copies in the system, both at St. John’s College. Both of these items have extensive notes, some in “Provenance Notes” and some in “MS additions.” Here’s a screenshot of the catalogue entry for the second copy at St. John’s, which includes an “MS addition” in the form of a “contents” list (probably a list of the contents of the book, but possibly an inventory of other kinds of materials or objects) <Figure 3>. In addition, the provenance note includes citation of some marginalia that expresses not just the ownership and transmission record normally belonging to provenance, but a set of interpersonal relationships of some emotional magnitude. As with the examples above, you could put in a request through BookMark for a fellow scholar who has access to St. John’s College and can take photographs for you. 

Figure 3

Library catalogues are all different, and many don’t have copy-specific notes. I’ve looked at the catalogs for the Newberry (in Chicago) and the Houghton (at Harvard), and they do have a notes field, but it seems to be used mainly for bibliographical observations about the contents and construction of that copy of the book. The Huntington Library catalogue has a category called “Huntington notes” which can include description of marginalia: for instance, for the collection’s 1605 copy of The hauen of health, for example, the Huntington note includes reference to three seventeenth-century ownership claims, two of which are women who share a surname, and for the library’s 1617 copy of Regimen sanitatis Salerni, the note says that the book bears the signature of owner William Newman, with the date 1621. It is possible that these books – and books that are catalogued but lack notes such as these – contain other early modern marginalia, and it might be worth checking out. 

At EMMRN, we’re happy to receive requests for photos of marginalia that just have the repository, title, date of publication, and call number. These will be passed on to whomsoever commits to fulfill the request; if you haven’t specified particular marginalia in the request, the fulfiller will look through the copy of the book and take photos of all the marginalia that are in the book, or the type (ownership, gift, notes on the text, miscellaneous additions, etc.) that you would like to retrieve. We’re also happy to answer questions (emmrn@uwaterloo.ca) about how to do this research – and Librarians at libraries will also be preternaturally helpful, in my experience, when we ask them to teach us things we can go on to do ourselves.

Good luck and happy hunting!  Drop us a line at emmrn@uwaterloo.ca if you find something interesting or would like to write a blog post about your marginalia adventures. 

The Newberry Library: An Introduction to Rare Books and Special Collections 

On By blaze wellingIn 17th century, OtherLeave a comment

Hello all, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Blaze Welling, and I am a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Waterloo in the English Language and Literature department. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Dr. Acheson on the Early Modern Marginalia Research Network (EMMRN) project for almost a year now. 

In March, Dr. Acheson and I had the opportunity to go to the Renaissance Society of America (RSA) 2024 Conference in Chicago. To make the most of this trip, we jumped at the opportunity to visit the Newberry Library to see some early modern materials, specifically some versions of Richard Blome’s A Description of the Island of Jamaica; With the other Isles and Territories in AMERICA, to which the English are Related, viz, […] Taken from the Notes of Sr.Thomas Linch Knight, Governour of Jamaica and other Experienced Persons in the said Places. Illustrated with Maps […]. (Yes, the title is that long). 

As a new scholar in the field and someone who has not worked with early modern materials, this experience was eye-opening. The opportunity to look at texts predating 1800 was fascinating and the value that was placed on these materials at the Newberry was a humbling experience that I’m grateful for. 

I have included some photos of a 1672 version of the Blome text that we were able to look at. This 1672 imprint of A Description of the Island of Jamaica […] (Figure 1) made all the repository research I had conducted come to life. Being able to touch a text that was written so long ago (and without gloves!) was such a unique and wonderful opportunity. This visit gave me a newfound appreciation for the work Dr. Acheson set out on with the EMMRN and made me grateful that there are spaces that value books and their rich histories as much as they should be. 

(Fig.1,  [Newberry Rare Books and Special Collections Department] Cover Page. Blome, “A Description of the Island of Jamaica,” 1672, Case G81.106.) 

Finding a label of the text (See Figure 2) that we can only assume was the owner of this version made this history come to life for me. Someone held this text, valued it, and claimed it as their own in the form of marginalia such as this. It does make you wonder where this book travelled with Nickolls among many other likely unanswerable questions. Who had it before 1742? Were maps removed for personal use and never returned? These questions motivate me to continue my search in the archives and attempt to find some answers to what seems unanswerable now. I think this is the inclination of early modernists and reflects the heart, patience, and determination that is required to research such materials. 

(Fig.2, [Newberry Rare Books and Special Collections Department] Sticker with Name and Date. Blome, “A Description of the Island of Jamaica,” 1672, Case G81.106.) 

Thinking about the work done on the EMMRN and seeing these materials and the life that comes along with marginal notes came to life was exciting as a new scholar. I can see how pulling the signs of use of A Description of the Island of Jamaica […] together can give us a picture of how English-speaking people received information about their new imperial economy and the places in which it was developing.

I’m eager to see where this project goes and what other opportunities it will provide me and the many other scholars using the network for their research interests. 

Introducing BookMark (and A description of the island of Jamaica (1672-78))

On By Kathy AchesonIn 17th century, English, Other2 Comments

The principal objective of the Early Modern Marginalia Research Network, and especially the BookMark tool, is to reduce barriers to access to marginalia. At present, research in marginalia is limited to those with ready access to large, historic collections, or those with job security and research funds (or even better, both) that can allow for the kind of location-specific research that marginalia scholars undertake. These constraints mean that a) research topics may not accurately reflect the interests and trends of early modern studies in a broader sense because those who can do marginalia studies are a small and privileged subset of the field, and b) those who do research in marginalia work primarily on marginalia, rather than on a broader set of topics for which marginalia might produce meaningful evidence. These biases affect not just who does the work, but what kind of work gets done.  

To give an example of the opportunities that such a tool might make available, a scholar of British imperialism and the Caribbean might want to collect marginalia from all surviving copies of a work such as A description of the island of Jamaica; with the other isles and territories in America, to which the English are related, viz. Barbadoes, St. Christophers, Nievis, or Mevis, Antego, St. Vincent. Dominica, Montserrat, Anguilla. Barbada, Bermudes, Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New-York, New-England, New-Found-Land. This book was issued four times between 1672 and 1678. According to the ESTC, there are more than 50 surviving copies in repositories in the UK, US, Europe, and Australia. I scanned the thumbnails of the four copies in EEBO, and there is marginalia in each one – nothing startling, signatures and ownership and gift claims, including this, in a copy now at the Bodleian: “Bibliothecae Ashmoleanae dedit Martinus Lister M. D.” This inscription means that that copy was part of a large collection of books that Martin Lister gave to the Ashmolean when it opened. But having a look at the copies outside of EEBO might yield further results. We’ve put requests for photos of any marginalia in all the surviving copies of this book in BookMark. You can search by location and see if there is a copy in a repository you might be able to visit.   

But there are other pathways to take with these tiny snips of book life from EEBO – there are other books with “Jamaica” in the title, and provenance, deaccession, and marginalia in them could create one of the many novel views available of the complex discursive and social worlds of early modern European empire, the early modern African slave trade, and the consequences of these we still live with. Heroic efforts have of course been made to collect marginalia in multiple copies of particular books. And we do collect this kind of marginalia, sometimes, some of us, but largely we depend on the goodwill of librarians to take and send photos, and therefore we are back to the value of institutional affiliation and status within the profession as part of the economy of goodwill. As Matthew Sangster, Karen Baston, and Brian Aitken write, “Digital technologies thus have the potential for allowing us to organize, reorganize, and potentially democratize knowledge by removing the constraints imposed by physical space and the manners of thinking it imposes” (Sangster, Baston, and Aitken 951). Along with Sangster, Baston, and Aitken, I assume that lowering barriers to access will support not only broader participation in marginalia research (that is, open the field beyond old white people like me), but the use of marginalia as evidence in support of diverse projects not centrally concerned with marginalia per se.  

It helps to remember what kind of scale we are talking about here. William Sherman estimated from his research that 20% of surviving early modern printed books have marginalia of some sort in them. Sherman’s sample – the 7500 volumes in the Huntington Library’s STC collection – is from a relatively modern collection, and it is certainly dependent on curatorial selection; both influence the likelihood of marginalia in the books in the collection. But it depends too what we think of as marginalia – if we broaden our attention to include anything that modifies or supplements the contents of a book – a rust stain from a pair of glasses, an interleaf, a bookplate, a hand-embellished capital, and so on – we will extend our purview considerably. One of the copies of the book about Jamaica at the Bodleian (W.I.C. 21) includes the following information in copy-specifc notes: there is a bookplate of “The Hamilton Palace Library Beckford Collection,” and an inscription to the effect that Bernard Quaritch bought the book at Sotheby’s in 1882; there is “a pencil note on Jamaica on the second free endleaf recto” which is on the map, I think, and other minor notes, possibly former shelfmarks or booksellers annotations. The book was previously owned by the West India Committee, and held at Rhodes House Library. There is a whole history embedded here in these copy-specific notes of a topic which is of great importance. There’s enough in this example to start a research project with, whether the focus is on the books or on any of the phenomena that their use and circulation are related to.  It is the aim of this project to support this kind of research and diversify who does research in marginalia and what we do with it.

Works cited

Sangster, Matthew, Karen Baston, and Brian Aitken. “Reconstructing student Reading Habits in Eighteenth-Century Glasgow: Enlightenment Systems and Digital Reconfigurations.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 54(2021)4: 935-955.