Skip to main content
The Collation

Margents and All: Thomas Milles between manuscript and print

Milles' motto

Thomas Milles’s motto, inscribed at the bottom of the title page in Columbia University’s copy of An Out-Port-Customers Accompt (STC 17935), as reproduced on EEBO. It appears in print on many of his other printed treatises (minus “Margents and All”), but here is supplied in manuscript.

Margins are exciting places, full of possibility. Early modern authors use them to guide readers, emphasize important passages, and add commentary. Early modern readers use them to highlight memorable text and make notes on their reading. Early modern scholars like to hang out in margins in order to witness these interactions, and then draw conclusions about the particular reader(s) or work, or about reading practices in general.

This relationship between author, reader, and scholar works well when we think about marginalia in published works as being primarily about reader guidance (printed marginalia) or reader response (manuscript marginalia). But what happens when early modern margins break the rules, when authors use them in unexpected ways, when the distinction between print and manuscript marginalia is fuzzy at best and when the marginalia threaten to usurp the work itself? 

  1. This case study is for a larger concept-in-progress, “Beyond Marginalia,” which focuses on the hybridity of many surviving early modern codices and on printed works as sources to be mined for manuscript miscellanies and commonplace books. We are grateful to Jeffrey Todd Knight, Stephen Tabor, and David Vander Meulen for their assistance with this post.
  2. “The Annotations to Copies of Thomas Milles’ Books in the British Museum and Bodleian Libraries,” The Library (1961): 133-139

Comments

It’s always a blessing when margins survive the savagery of re-binders. Amazing that all of Milles’s marginalia in that page of Customers Accompt is still there, for example. Goran Proot explained to me the profit motive of the binder to trim off as much of the margin as he could get away with, in order to recycle the trimmed paper.

Thanks for this post, and thanks to Bill Sherman for his wonderful Used Books. I’m curious if he ever ran across a book like the Folger’s STC 2106, where each of the 14 marginal manuscript manicules in the Whole Booke of Psalmes is unlike any other. I recall he wrote that most early readers used a manicule that was as distinctive as their signature.

And, while I’m on manicules, does anyone have any influence with the OED? Every time I’ve asked, they’ve said “manicule” hasn’t yet been used enough for them to include it. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Richard M. Waugaman — July 27, 2013

Reply

Thanks, Richard. Yes, in some cases people use more than style for their manicules and in others it’s clear that more than one reader is at work. And a few years back a great blog called “languagehat” (http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003319.php) made an appeal to get “manicule” in the OED. No success yet….

Bill Sherman — August 3, 2013

Reply

My note on the Beinecke copy of The Misterie of Iniquitie says: ‘cancelled (presentation?) inscription on title page; MS and printed insertions in text; printed Latin motto (‘Nil magis’ etc) pasted to blank leaf following title’.

arnold — July 27, 2013

Reply

Thanks to Arnold for his notes about the Beinecke copy: this seems to be yet another variation!

And thanks to Richard for his kind words about my work. I’ll reply to him directly about the manicules. And yes, Milles’ marginalia have been spared the binder’s razor: this is partly because they were unusually generous to begin with and partly because these were presentation copies sent to important people and survive in at least two cases (Huntington and Lambeth Palace) in their original bindings–a uniform limp vellum with traces of green ties.

Bill Sherman — July 31, 2013

Reply

Thank you for this insightful posting! I’m wondering about a Milles book in my collection, the Catalogue of Honor (1610), and the restored (?) state of its infamous mutilation. (The mutilation is discussed on Adam Hooks’s “Anchora” blog.) Some scans of my copy can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dicksonkenwin/.

Your posting has me wondering if there might be a way we could determine, judging from the processes used in the insertion of the slip, or from other features present, whether the work was done by Milles himself?

I located another “restored” copy (#2) on the ABE site. The description of the “repair” on that one is written with such subtlety: “ . . . pp.493/4 are mutilated in most copies, as they show signs of having been in this copy, but the scurrilous passage concerning children out of wedlock, has been let-in to complete the page once again.” By contrast, the note penciled in on my copy states that it is “unmutilated” – but surely that is false and misleading!

I’m eager to hear your thoughts . . .

KD

Dickson Kenwin — August 9, 2013

Reply

Thanks for your question, KD! The type face of the insert suggests that your copy was restored at a much later date, perhaps in the nineteenth century. For insertions like this, you would also want to check if the paper was hand-made or machine-made. It looks like Milles had nothing to do with the afterlife of this particular copy, but it is still interesting that someone went to the trouble to restore the missing text, many years later.

Heather Wolfe — August 17, 2013

Reply

Thanks so much for your expertise! It’s kind of a letdown — but great to know the facts. I suppose this restoration is ‘marginally’ better than having a hole in the page or a blank slip, as some of them seem to have (e.g., copy #3 in French on that same ABE page):

Dickson Kenwin — August 18, 2013

Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *