The over seven hundred texts in Marguerite Hicks’ collection are filled with various types of marginalia, including notes in the margins, bookseller’s marks, previous owner’s names, and more. Book owners from all time periods added their own marks to their books. With these additions, book owners tell a story within the written text of their books' lives.
Marginalia is more than just writing in the margins. Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the term "marginalia" in 1832, though it long predates the printed book (Wagstaff, 2012). Now the term generally includes any and all reader modifications, including marginal notes, underlining, highlighting, and dog-earing (Wagstaff, 2012). In those terms, bookplates affixed by book owners are also unique marginalia. Marguerite Hicks added her own bookplate to a few pieces in her collection in order to signify her ownership, including in this one from The Works of John Jewel. After seeing many different bookplates from her books' previous owners, it is no surprise that she wanted to add one of herself, sitting with her dachshund and cat at her desk. Even the use of her own motto would teach the book’s next owner that it was once owned by someone whose “Virtus Mille Scuta” or “virtue as good as a thousand shields.” With small details like animals, house sigils, and Latin, bookplates, such as Hicks', allow for future readers to learn about the book's past owners in unique and small ways.
Some book owners took their ownership very seriously, not only putting their name and year of acquisition into the book, but also anathemas, or “book curses,” to warn others not to damage or steal their books. While the Hicks Collection doesn’t have an anathema, one of the bookplates in the collection seems to be a warning to any borrower of said book. In his copy of Moral Essays and Reflection by Mrs. Jane Gosling, C.W. Walker's bookplate states, “If thou art borrow’d by a friend / Right welcome shall he be / To read, to copy - not to lend - / But to return to me.” C.W. Walker felt that if his books were lent they “returned to him no more.” This marginalia shows his love for his books and how much they meant to him. As far as bookplates go, C.W. Walker has one that inspires a story of love and devotion to his books within the confines of the book itself. This specific bookplate anathema allows current readers of the Hicks' collection to understand the love the previous owners had for their books.
H. J. Jackson enumerates the motives for why people have historically written in their books; many are social or emotional reasons. Readers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries wrote personalized notes in a book before gifting it to a friend because “reading was more often than not a social activity” (Wagstaff 2014, Jackson 2001). Lended books might return to their original owners with additional comments, allowing for a shared reading of a text by both its owner, and those who encountered the book later on (Wagstaff 2014). The Hicks Project Team found one such quaint note from Thelma James to Marguerite Hicks in one of her books, stating, “To Marguerite with much love, Thelma. M. A. Wayne University, June 17th, 1937.” This inscription provides insight into their relationship: James’ marginalia highlights her fondness for Hicks, which she expressed through her. Social marginalia like this provides information about the book's life and shows just how cherished the book has been over the course of its life.
This little drawing found on the endpapers of a nineteenth-century children’s book tells a story of its previous owner as well. This marginalia is of a little drawing that tells the tale of a previous owner that felt the need to draw in their book. We may not know for sure whether a child drew this picture, but the picture in itself allows the next owner of the book to smile and remember a time when they would’ve drawn in their books as a child. Little marginalia drawings are important because they show the creativity that previous readers felt the need to leave behind in their books.
While inventorying the Hicks Collection, a remedy for blood spitting was found gently pinned into the flyleaf inside of a 1778 copy of Nicholas Culpeper's The English Physician Enlarged. The remedy itself has been repinned several times, as seen by various holes in the added paper. Not only was this book well-used for the remedies printed in it, but it was also supplemented to increase its utility by its previous owner. Margaret Ezell, in her chapter “Handwriting and the Book,” refers to this kind of personalization as "hybrid books," or books that fuse the individuality of the handwritten volumes with the contents of printed texts.
In quite a few spots of the text the name “Thomas Wigglesworth” is written in the same writing as the remedy, which makes one assume that he added said remedy into the book. This alone tells the story of a man who needed to look back not only at this book of remedies often, but also to his own remedy for blood spitting.
Thomas Wigglesworth’s addition of his own remedy that he pinned into the side of his book truly makes his book a hybrid text. This hybridization allowed for Thomas Wigglesworth to make his own story within his book that gives insight into the past for the readers of today.
With technology changing the ways we can interact with text, the act of adding marginalia must adapt to digital environments, as well. Marginalia once confined to physical pages, flyleaves, and inside covers must find its way into the likes of e-readers and PDFs. It tells the tales of the book itself, which provides valuable glimpses into the past. Marginalia presents a frame story inside the text of a book, and it is important to preserve it because it tells the story of a book’s life.
Ezell, Margaret J. M. “Handwriting and the Book.” The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book, edited by Leslie Howsam, 90–106. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Jackson, Heather J. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. Yale University Press, 2002.
Wagstaff, Kiri L. "The Evolution of Marginalia." San Jose State University, 2012.
