Illustrations

Figure 1.	“The use, not the reading, of books makes us wise,” from Geoffrey Whitney’s Choice of Emblems (1586)
Figure 2.	Title page of Cardinal William Allen, A True, Sincere, and Modest Defense
Figure 3.	Richard Topcliffe’s marginalia in Allen’s True, Sincere, and Modest Defense
Figure 4.	Dueling marginalia in a Catholic text
Figure 5.	Isaac Casaubon reads Francis Bacon for English practice
Figure 6.	Ownership inscriptions in The Treasury of Amadis of France
Figure 7.	The Levenger Company’s “How to Leave Masterly Marginalia”
Figure 8.	Reader’s key to his symbolic indexing system in Cicero’s De Oratore
Figure 9.	John Dee’s manicules in Pantheus’s Voarchadumia
Figure 10.	Archbishop Matthew Parker’s characteristic manicule
Figure 11.	Bernardo Bembo’s lifelike manicules in his commonplace book
Figure 12.	Elaborate manicules in a commentary on Aristotle
Figure 13.	Reader playing with the space of the page
Figure 14.	“A Show of Hands”: Charles Hasler’s printed manicules
Figure 15.	Ben Jonson’s emphatic manicule in Puttenham’s Art of English Poesy
Figure 16.	Mary Crewe’s notes on faith in John Ball’s Short Treatise
Figure 17.	Dorothy Clegge’s notes in William Gouge’s Of Domestical Duties
Figure 18.	Lady Grace Mildmay’s autobiographical and spiritual meditations
Figure 19.	Richard Topcliffe’s note on the Bible seized by Sir Francis Drake during his raid on Santo Domingo in 1586
Figure 20.	An embroidered binding on a 1616 Bible: the front (Old Testament) cover
Figure 21.	An embroidered binding on a 1616 Bible: the back (New Testament) cover
Figure 22.	A child’s embellishments of the royal arms in a 1628 King James Bible
Figure 23.	Manuscript Book of Common Prayer (1560–62): typographical initial featuring rose and serpent
Figure 24.	Manuscript Book of Common Prayer (1560–62): plundered initials from late medieval manuscripts
Figure 25.	Censored prayers in a 1545 primer
Figure 26.	Manuscript Book of Common Prayer (1560–62): amateur mock-woodcut initial
Figure 27.	Manuscript Book of Common Prayer (1560–62): professional mock-woodcut initial
Figure 28.	Manuscript Book of Common Prayer (1560–62): recycled initial with Christ displaying wounds
Figure 29.	Sir Julius Caesar’s additions to the index in Foxe’s Pandectae locorum communium
Figure 30.	Caesar’s notes on curiosity in Foxe’s Pandectae locorum communium
Figure 31.	Caesar’s revisions of The Ancient State . . . of the Court of Requests
Figure 32.	Marginalia in a 1583 Psalter
Figure 33.	Sign on readers’ tables from Cambridge University Library
Figure 34.	“Unused Books”: a foolish reader from The Ship of Fools (1509)
Figure 35.	William Smedley’s table of Bacon’s marginal marks
Figure 36.	“Finger on the future” at the National Library of Scotland