December 21, 2007

'Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England'

By NINA C. AYOUB

It was a book well handled, but in whose hands? That was the mystery for William H. Sherman, a professor of English, early in his research on readers' marginalia in Renaissance England. Who was the reader whose annotations filled a 1584 text by an English Roman Catholic cardinal?

The notes — copious, aggressive, "vehemently Protestant" — challenged the prelate on his defense of Catholics executed for alleged treason. Unusually, Mr. Sherman recalls, each annotation