Marginalia
Recent shifts in scholarship towards a focus on reception and reading have lead to a new appreciation of the value of readers' marks and annotations as a source for historical research. The history of reading is still largely unwritten but it is an area which can provide insights and revelations for biographers, editors and historians of language and literature.
Stimulated by Professor Tony Grafton's 2003 CELL Masterclass, we are currently developing a pilot project for an online edition of Gabriel Havey's marginalia. The aims of this project are discussed by CELL's Technical Director Dr Jan Broadway in her essay 'Layered Readings: Towards an Electronic Edition of Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia. Pilot Project Report' [PDF].
Our interest at CELL in these kinds of notes has led us to give special attention to marginalia in projects where this is not necessarily the primary focus. The letters of William Herle include annotations that reveal how Herle and his patron Lord Burghley utilised letters for different purposes. The workdiaries of Robert Boyle include marginalia by Boyle on his own notebooks that show the progress of his scientific investigations. As these examples demonstrate, our belief in the value of this aspect of the archive is influential upon editorial policy and the selection of material for CELL projects.
The study of marginalia was the focus of one strand of CELL's Sitting on the Cat symposium in June 2006 and stimulated Jan Broadway's eprint Political appropriation: Reading Sir Walter Ralegh's 'Dialogue between a Counsellor of State and a Justice of Peace' [PDF].
