Tag: marginalia

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.

Renske Hoff: Streepjescode 

On By Kathy AchesonIn OtherLeave a comment

Dr. Renske Hoff specializes in late-medieval religious book culture, with a particular focus on the use and transmission of Middle Dutch biblical texts. She is Assistant Professor of Middle Dutch Literature at Utrecht University (The Netherlands). Her recent research concerns the readers of early-sixteenth-century Dutch Bibles and their reading practices. She is currently developing a research project on the use and users of Middle Dutch psalters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which she combines perspectives from literary studies, religious studies, and book history. 

Editor: Do you remember your first marginalia?  

RH: One of the first marginalia I encountered was a note in a early-sixteenth-century Dutch Bible. A parent wrote down the birthdays of their two daughters in the margins of the liturgical reading schedule in the Bible. I was touched by the personal character of the note and it got me thinking about the various roles a book, and a Bible in particular, could play in a person’s life: not only as a carrier of text and a devotional object, but also as an open space for personal memories and the formation of identities.  

Editor: What do you find most interesting or powerful about marginalia? Can you give us an example?  

RH: In 1998, the Dutch writer and comedian Kees Torn wrote a song called ‘Streepjescode’ [Barcode], about the book collection of his late father (see: https://youtu.be/Caad5lsLc7k). He sings about how his father, whom he barely got to know, marked his books with pencil, underlining sentences. Torn writes: ‘Je hebt per ongeluk een zelfportret geschetst in streepjescode’ [‘You have accidentally sketched a self portrait in barcode’]. To me, that is the magic of marginalia. We often have little clue to why a certain book-user left a certain note, coloured a certain woodcut, pasted in a certain image. Still, in their marginalia, readers and book-users leave an image of themselves. A fleeting moment of interaction solidifies on the page, safely remaining for centuries between the protective boards of the book. As marginalia researchers, we can see the vague but irresistible reflections of other individuals that once slid their fingers between the pages of the same book we are holding now. Marginalia allow us a glimpse behind the curtains of passing time.  

Editor: What do you see as the future for marginalia studies?  

RH: I think we’re moving away from marginalia studies as merely the study of the annotations of exceptional individuals and are broadening our understanding of the concept of marginalia, including verbal as well as non-verbal traces of reading and book use. I think these developments are crucial in creating a more inclusive field of study, in which spaces can be opened up for those voices that have been marginalized even in marginalia studies. Marginalia in the traditional sense of the word were often left by male, white, abled-bodied, scholarly people. These people have thus received ample attention in marginalia studies. However, premodern texts and books were used by a much wider variety of people, including people of colour, disabled people, and women. We need new ways of understanding and studying marginalia and readers’ traces to allow their voices to come through. 

Image 1: Dutch New Testament printed by Christoffel Plantijn in 1577 (Leuven: Maurits Sabbe Library P22.055.1/BIBL N.T. 1577). The inscription can be translated as: ‘This book belongs to Elisabet Imberecht; whoever finds it will receive a piece of silver [silver ring], but who demands even more will receive a blow to his ribs. 1676.” 

Cristoph Sander: Marginalia and the Horizons of Interpretation

On By Kathy AchesonIn OtherLeave a comment

Today’s interview features Christoph Sander. He studied philosophy in Freiburg and Berlin. In 2019, he received his Ph.D. from the Technische Universität Berlin with a thesis on the conceptions of magnetism in the early-modern period. Since then, he has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome (Max Planck Institute for Art History) and at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. His interests include the digital humanities, www.raramagnetica.de being his main platform to share his digital research.

Editor: What got you interested in marginalia?  

CS: I initially became interested in marginalia because they offer an intimate insight into the reception of a text at a specific time. Simply put, I wanted to see what a past reader spontaneously noted in their own copy. I was especially intrigued to see if this specific interest could be linked to the broader reception of a work. 

Editor: Do you remember your first marginalia?  

The first marginalia I examined as a historian were from the medieval commentaries on Aristotle’s writings. I noticed that translators oddly translated Aristotle’s rare use of the word “demon” as “scientia”. Without delving into why they chose this translation, it was evident that individual readers of these translations either restored the original word “demon” in the margins or, conversely, added the translation next to another passage containing the word “demon”. I have written on this: Christoph Sander, “Der Dämon im Text: lateinische Lesarten von De somno 453b22 und De divinatione per somnum 463b12 zwischen 1150 und 1650,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 83, no. 2 (2016): 245–311.

Image 1: Aristotle, Textus Paruorumnaturalium Arestotelis per tractatus [et] capitula distinct[us] De nouo emendat[us], Leipzig 1496–99. Source: HAB Wolfenbüttel (A: 95.7 Quod. 2° (2)).

Editor: What do you find most interesting or powerful about marginalia?  

CS: As mentioned, I’m drawn to marginalia primarily because they provide a close look into readers’ understanding and interpretive horizon. This is particularly intriguing as it often reveals subversive readings that may not be captured in the reception history. Lately, another aspect has caught my attention: I aim to learn more about the contexts for marginalia, such as which themes in texts are most frequently annotated by readers. I view marginalia broadly as any intentional trace of reading and sense-making, including not just text in the margins but also underlining, strikethroughs, dog ears, and any marking interpretable as a trace of reading. Evaluating these traces quantitatively in relation to the subjects covered in the marked texts provides a complex network. Analyzing this network practically requires powerful computers and specific models. Also, a large amount of material is necessary to make connections visible. 

Editor: What marginalia are you working on now?  

CS: In my “Magnetic Margins” project, I’ve examined all the copies of early modern editions of certain works on magnetism and recorded all reading traces in a database. This database is publicly available at www.magnetic-margins.com. The benefit of this approach is that it’s essentially the same text across hundreds of copies. Thus, statistically, it’s relatively easy to determine which content particularly interested readers. The more markings related to specific content, the more interest in that content can be inferred. My hypothesis is that marking a chunk of text reflects an interest in its conceptual content. This assumption seems especially plausible for scientific texts. 

Image 2: Preliminary statistical graphical evaluation for William Gilbert’s De magnete (PNG download). All annotations are summed per chapter across all copies of all four editions and multiplied by the number of copies in which the corresponding chapter was annotated. This results in a relative weighting (so absolute y-values are irrelevant), which normalizes if very few copies have very many annotations for a chapter.

Editor: What do you see as the future of marginalia studies?  
 
CS: I believe the future of this research field lies primarily in collaboration – not only among researchers but also between researchers and libraries, and between researchers and IT specialists. There are already initial experiments using artificial intelligence to automatically identify marginalia in scans. This would be a huge help, even if it’s not always 100% accurate. 

Editor: Is there anything else you want to tell us?  
 
CS: I find it notable that there isn’t a unified vocabulary for describing marginalia. While the reasons are clear, library sciences have typically been more pragmatic. Historians and philologists, deeply engaged with this phenomenon of marginalia, sometimes overemphasize minute specific differences or discuss historical categories at a very abstract level, rather than recognizing the potential of a shared vocabulary. This shared vocabulary, even if imperfect or somewhat anachronistic at points, can create international synergies for collaboration. Furthermore, it’s disappointing that many libraries still don’t provide their scans with an open license. This can complicate the lawful use of this material and can sometimes be prohibitively expensive.