Do you write in your books? Do you annotate your e-books? Perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Marginalia can provide historians with an important source of information about one’s reading habits, ideas, and feelings.
On August 13th, the Globe and Mail featured the research of Prof. Micheline White, who has discovered “fresh evidence of the inner turmoil of England’s most famous King…doodles that Henry VIII made in the margins of a prayer book.” Prof. White published her discovery in Renaissance Quarterly earlier this year in an essay entitled “Katherine Parr’s Giftbooks, Henry VIII’s Marginalia, and the Display of Royal Power and Piety.”
Prof. Micheline White’s archival work with marginalia written by King Henry VIII is currently featured in FASS Stories. You can find Alyssa Tremblay’s excellent article, “Notes from the Margins,” here.
Photo taken by Nick Peate