Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England

by William H. Sherman

In a recent sale catalog, one bookseller apologized for the condition of a sixteenth-century volume as "rather soiled by use." When the book was displayed the next year, the exhibition catalogue described it as "well and piously used [with] marginal notations in an Elizabethan hand [that] bring to life an early and earnest owner"; and the book's buyer, for his part, considered it to be "enlivened by the marginal notes and comments." For this collector, as for an increasing number of cultural historians and historians of the book, a marked-up copy was more interesting than one in pristine condition.

William H. Sherman recovers a culture that took the phrase "mark my words" quite literally. Books from the first two centuries of printing are full of marginalia and other signs of engagement and use, such as customized bindings, traces of food and drink, penmanship exercises, and doodles. These marks offer a vast archive of information about the lives of books and their place in the lives of their readers.

Based on a survey of thousands of early printed books, Used Books describes what readers wrote in and around their books and what we can learn from these marks by using the tools of archaeologists as well as historians and literary critics. The chapters address the place of book-marking in schools and churches, the use of the "manicule" (the ubiquitous hand-with-pointing-finger symbol), the role played by women in information management, the extraordinary commonplace book used for nearly sixty years by Renaissance England's greatest lawyer-statesman, and the attitudes toward annotated books among collectors and librarians from the Middle Ages to the present.

This wide-ranging, learned, and often surprising book will make the marks of Renaissance readers more visible and legible to scholars, collectors, and bibliophiles.

Genres: Books About Books, History, Nonfiction, British Literature, Renaissance

288 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

About the author

William H. Sherman is Professor of Early Modern Studies in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. He is the author of John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance and of many articles on Renaissance literature, travel writing, and the history of the book. He has also edited The Tempest and Its Travels with Peter Hulme, and the new Cambridge edition of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist with Peter Holland.

Reviews

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found most interesting the last section on the book market and how the way books are valued has changed. Whereas books used to be most valued if they were unmarked (and Renaissance texts were actually sometimes bleached to remove marginalia, horrifyingly), now collectors and of course scholars see the value in the marginalia.

Sherman points out that many of the notes in these early books had nothing to do with the books. Since paper was so valuable, people didn't waste empty space on any.

Overall an interesting look at what, why and how people wrote in their books.

[wiwi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a good one! The topic at hand is very lovely and handled well. Includes a lot of thought for food too. Occasionally it gets a bit too list like, but it's not too bad. (& I'm pretty sure some might gain more than I did from those part of the book, so even these parts def have a purpose.)

Enjoyed this one a lot.

[Angela Tenore · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say. I am a history buff and let my nerd flag fly as I read this!

[Jing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book; eloquently explains my love of used books.

[Doom Slayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose this to read for book history. Let me start by saying I don't like book history, a class that revolves around Rodger Darton's information circuit. I like canonical literature, and I like the philosophy of history like Hegel, but book history itself is a materialistic study which I feel doesn't really approach what is beautiful about literature. This book is no different in that regard, simply a materialistic, as opposed to intellectual pursuit. There's some philosophical stuff, I remember there being some philosophical aspects about sign usages. But overall, nothing in this book was ever more than mildly interesting. I gave it a 3 and not a 2 because it's lukewarm to me, right in between good and bad; better than bad, but less than good enough for me to call it a good book. 6/10.

[Ex Libris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Relatively uninteresting for Sherman, who has written several very good books (notably his book on John Dee).

[Jerzy]

(NR5 S553U, in Hunt on 5th floor)