MARGINALIA

Even such is time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us nought but age and dust;
Which in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days!
And from which grave, and earth, and dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

- Sir Walter Raleigh, written in the margins of his Bible the night before his execution

Marginalia: Writing in the margins of books. Otherwise known in the public school systems and libraries as defacing a book.

For years after I graduated from high school, I never wrote anything in a book, including my own name, even if I owned it. I still used the library a lot, and of course, I would never, still, think of writing in the margins of library books or any borrowed book.

Now there are articles, books, and websites dedicated to marginalia. There are literary magazines titled "Marginalia." And there is still debate about whether it's good or bad to write in the margins of books.

In Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books, author H. J. Jackson notes that at a book signing Maurice Sendak is told by a panicked child not to wreck his new book by autographing it. Mr. Sendak (no doubt highly amused), didn't sign it. I haven't read Marginalia (I saw the anecdote in a review), but I'm highly tempted and did put it on my wish list at Amazon.

Because by researching this article I became quite interested in the subject. Maybe you will to.

Some people believe that writing notes in the margins of books we own and learn from is a good idea. It turns the reading into a dialogue between writer and reader. In How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren it's argued you don't really "own" a book, spiritually, intellectually, until you mark it up. I now feel free in the books I own to mark passages and even list in the front of a book all the pages that have notes on them. Others are still horrified by the idea, like the little boy at the book signing.

Marginalia is described as notes, comments, even scribbles in the margins. It can also include drawings, drolleries and decoration. Doodles, marks such as crosses, stars and other signs are not considered marginalia. Annotation differs from marginalia in that the it is meant to be published and rarely includes the person's thoughts. Here's an interesting piece about marginalia in a New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/books/21margin.html?_r=1

where I learned that in a book called The Pen and the Book , ". . . Mark Twain, . . . had penciled, among other observations, a one-way argument with the author, Walter Besant, that 'nothing could be stupider' than using advertising to sell books as if they were 'essential goods' like 'salt' or 'tobacco'."

I have to wonder what Mr. Twain would think about the current marketing of books. I'm sure his publisher would arrange a display of his books at all the bookstores to sell more.

Famous prisoners such as Voltaire and Nelson Mandela used marginalia to write their own books. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a 6,000-word article about marginalia. You can find it on-line, if interested. Samual T. Coleridge wrote five volumes of the stuff. John Adams and Joseph Stalin wrote lots of marginalia. Richard Nixon and Harry Truman used marginalia on news clippings, then sent them to staff to act upon.

Scholia predates marginalia. These are explanatory or grammatical comments usually made by the writer himself. In other words, they are not the reader's thoughts, but are actual facts and a part of the manuscript. For example, a definition of a word, or a translation of a word or phrase, is placed in the margin. For a fact, the writer might write in an explanation--a gloss. More often now, footnotes are used. The first known usage of this word is in the 1st century BC! The earliest known use of the word marginalia didn't occur until 1819 in Blackwood's Magazine .

If you find a book with marginalia written by a famous person, that book will most likely have more value. When reading a book with margin notes, you may find the notes themselves add value for you. Many college students look for marginalia in used textbooks and buy those with the most.

If margins are not big enough--use a slip of paper and place it in the book. If you don't own the book, use a notebook you designate for this purpose to write the title/author of the book, each page number where you want to comment or mark, and get it down for later when you'll surely want it someday. The newest e-book readers usually have a way to bookmark and add notes, but many find it awkward to do so with the tiny keyboards. Personally, I like the idea of a notebook at hand better, just as when you've borrowed the book.

Several magazines with the word marginalia in their titles which don't seem to have anything to do, really, with marginalia.

Sam Anderson, book critic for New York Magazine , has a book out: A Year in Marginalia: Sam Anderson. He writes remarks in the margins of books he's going to review, and his book is a collection of that marginalia. You can follow him on Twitter, too, where he tweets each day the best line from the book he's reading.

Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, wrote a funny poem about marginalia: http://www.billy-collins.com/2005/06/marginalia.html

Many collections and single titles from famous authors have their own marginalia in them. Edgar Allen Poe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ayn Rand, Jonathan Swift, among others. Like arguing with yourself.

Then there's Herman Melville. He educated himself through systematic reading, and, you guessed it, used marginalia extensively. When he died, he had about 1,000 books on hand, many of them with notes in the margins. There are even two books about Melville's marginalia: Check list of Books Owned and Borrowed (updated several times) by Merton M. Sealts Jr., and Melville's Marginalia by Wilson Walker Cowen . And there's a website devoted to Melville's annotations: http://www.boisestate.edu/melville/IntroFrameset.html . What is also interesting is that books of his with marginalia keep showing up, and many of them are in private collections.

Years later, John Updike used marginalia to write his reviews, to critique other writers, and he claimed, to make him a better writer. He said he read slower than he wrote.

"Hostile marginalia" argues, attacks and corrects. Sometimes the reader uses a red pen or pencil. "Nonsense" used to be the word often used in hostile marginalia, but seems to have been replace in modern times by "bullshit." Of interest to readers of Mysterical-e might be the idea of some people grading stories in anthologies, giving them A's, B's, C's, etc. in the Table of Contents.

Even the Gutenberg Bible at the Ransom Center at UT Austin has marginalia. Go here to see the actual pages and what was written: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/gutenberg/invention/marginalia/

Heaven to ardent writers in the margins would be wider margins. During the American Colonial period, books were printed this way for just such a purpose.

Some think marginalia is dead. But it has been suggested that blogging is taking its place. Blogs are where people are putting their thoughts now.

And finally, go here to see some marks that readers have used as a shorthand in margins: http://www.levenger.com/PAGETEMPLATES/HOWTO/HelpfulHints.asp?Params=category=679-694|level=2-3|pageid=3905-3894

Okay, you get the idea. Marginalia is a huge subject--too large to put in the margins of many books. I only got to page eight when Googling the subject. If you'd like to learn more, Google the word "Marginalia" and start at page nine. Have fun. It's a fascinating subject.

"The principal truth is this: latent in every act of complete reading is the compulsion to write a book in reply." - From George Steiner's essay The Uncommon Reader

Many people reply in the margins. Read! Write!

Currently reading, A Patchwork of Stories: 9 Tales from Sunny Side Up to Over Hard by Kaye George. Fascinating!