In 1599, when Martín Del Rio finally published the Six Books of Investigations into Magic he had started some twenty years earlier, he began with a “Prologue, explaining why this treatise has been difficult to write, but why it was necessary to do so”—or, in the more elegant phrasing of the Latin original, “Proloquium de difficultate, et necessitate huius tractationis.” Every book that makes it into print has overcome some measure of difficultas in response to some form of necessitas; but it is especially appropriate to account for the process in this study of readers’ marks, which (like Del Rio’s book) has been more than a decade in the making and which concerns a slippery subject that (like magic) raises profound problems of definition, interpretation, and regulation.
What has always returned me to the necessity of studying this material is direct contact with old books and the readers whose lives they (however fleetingly) preserve. The thrilling, and sometimes unnerving, sense that I am looking over the shoulder of a long-dead reader has never diminished, even when I cannot make out his or her face or hand; and the sense of responsibility that comes with these privileged glimpses is as deep as ever. My first and greatest debt, therefore, goes to the libraries that have granted me access to their rare book collections and the librarians, curators, cataloguers, and conservators who have helped me find my way around them. The initial project took shape during a fellowship at the Huntington Library in the summer of 1992, and it has been sustained ever since by the generous support of its staff (particularly Roy Ritchie, Alan Jutzi, Mary Robertson, Steven Tabor, Laura Stalker, and Susan Green). Much of my subsequent research and writing were carried out at the Folger Shakespeare Library (where I am especially grateful to Gail Kern Paster, Barbara Mowat, Richard Kuhta, Heather Wolfe, Betsy Walsh, Georgianna Ziegler, Frank Mowery, Deborah Leslie, Ron Bogdan, Jim Kuhn, Kathleen Lynch, and Carol Brobeck), at Corpus Christi College Cambridge (where Christopher de Hamel and Gill Cannell were gracious hosts), and at the British Library. It is a pleasure, too, to acknowledge the support of the institutions that have funded my forays into the archives: the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington and Folger Libraries, the General Research Board of the University of Maryland, the F. R. Leavis Fund at the University of York, and the Bibliographical Society (UK).
And what has always pushed me through the difficulty involved in making sense of these materials is the scholarly conversation that reminds me of the ways in which they matter to others. My deepest debts go to Lisa Jardine, Anthony Grafton, Heidi Brayman Hackel, Steven Zwicker, Kevin Sharpe, Stephen Orgel, and Heather Jackson: if the margins now feel far less lonely than when I started this project, it is not simply because they have kept me company there but also because their own writings on the subject have helped to put marginalia at the very center of literary and historical studies. I am also indebted to many other scholars who have discussed the project with me through the years, providing information and encouragement when I most needed them: Sharon Achinstein, Jennifer Andersen, Christy Anderson, Nicolas Barker, Sabrina Baron, Julie Biggs, Ann Blair, Anston Bosman, Warren Boutcher, Judith Buchanan, Shane Butler, James Carley, Andrew Cambers, Kent Cartwright, Stephen Clucas, Anne Coldiron, John Considine, Bradin Cormack, Brian Cummings, Paul Duguid, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Mary Erler, Lori Anne Ferrell, Juliet Fleming, Alex Gillespie, Robert Harding, Elinor Jansz, Stephen Johnston, Craig and Hilaire Kallendorf, David Scott Kastan, Sean Keilen, Seth Lerer, Jeffrey Masten, Carla Mazzio, Linne Mooney, David Norbrook, Tim Raylor, Joad Raymond, Julian Roberts, Bernard S. Rosenthal, David Rundle, Elizabeth Sauer, Fred Schurink, Jim Shapiro, Bill Slights, Adam Smyth, Alan Stewart, Naomi Tadmor, Daniel Traister, Alex Walsham, and Alison Wiggins.
I must single out Peter Stallybrass, with whom I have compared notes on notes at every turn. Thanks to Peter and his colleagues (particularly Rebecca Bushnell, Roger Chartier, and Margreta de Grazia), many of the ideas in this book were first tried out on audiences at the University of Pennsylvania. And for inviting me to speak at conferences and seminars elsewhere I would like to thank Elizabeth Clarke, Stephen Clucas, David Colclough, Holly Crocker, Paula Findlen, Andrew Hadfield, Michael Harris, Peter Hulme, John Kerrigan, Paulina Kewes, John King, Giles Mandelbrote, Molly Murray, Robin Myers, Jason Scott-Warren, Garrett Sullivan, and Jennifer Summit.
I am grateful to Jerry Singerman and his team at the University of Pennsylvania Press (particularly Mariana Martinez, Erica Ginsburg, John Hubbard, and Jennifer Shenk) for their exemplary care in turning my words and images into a Material Text. And thanks are due, finally, to the editors and publishers who have allowed me to rework material first published in the following books and journals: Paul Saenger and Kimberly van Kampen, eds., The Bible as Book: The First Printed Editions (British Library/Oak Knoll); Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer, eds., Books and Readers in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press); Sabrina Baron, ed., The Reader Revealed (Folger Shakespeare Library); Shakespeare Studies; The Book Collector; Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote, eds., Owners, Annotators and the Signs of Reading (British Library/Oak Knoll); and Stephen Clucas, ed., John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought (Springer).