Marginal Notes, Now Published

Marginal Notes: Social Reading and the Literal Margins, edited by Patrick Spedding, Paul Tankard and Mia Goodwin (London: Palgrave, 2021)—the latest volume in the New Directions in Book History series—was issued on 29 March 2021. However, as far as I am concerned it was only really published yesterday, when I got to sit down on a quiet and relaxed Saturday morning, with a fresh coffee, and with the book in hand, like this:

The book, which is extremely satisfying to handle, is the final product of a conference collaboration that I first discussed with Paul Tankard in late 2015. The cover is also illustrated with the same image that graced the poster for our original conference (of the same name, and from which the book sprung) in September 2016 (announced on this blog, here).

I am inordinately proud of the cover image, since it contains a rebus—made slightly more obvious, I hope, by the positioning of image and title on the cover. As you can see in the original photo above, the annotator of my copy of Samuel Croxall's Fables of Aesop, not only glossed difficult words and phrases in the text, but also illustrated the silver tankard that is a central feature of this tale (which the thief is seeking at the bottom of the well). Not only is Paul's surname thus illustrated by way of annotation and rebus on the cover, mine is kind-of implied too: the "arch dissembler" being in the process of running or speeding (!) away. (Yes, this is lame, but it is a little less lame to me since, if I do not spell out my name, letter by letter, it is unfailingly recorded as "Speeding"!)

Moving on … of course, once I had a calm, reflective browse of the contents of our collection—I found one alarming error after another. And so I stopped, picked up my pencil, and annotated my copy with the corrections illustrated below. If you happen to read the book, or any of the essays in this collection, and find any more errors, please don't tell me. Rather, do as I have done, and as readers have long done, correct your copy too.