Chapter 5 (Re-)reading and record-keeping

Re-reading and reading notes

Marginalia in printed books not only reveal what people thought of their reading and what they read but can also show us the multiple ways in which they read – the practices associated with reading. Marginalia might be included to make sense of the text, to create shortcuts useful for skim reading or to add one’s own ideas or cross-references. This is a particular form of marginalia, one which interacts directly with the text itself. However, it also alters the text. This might happen through a literal correcting or altering on the part of the reader (by correcting errors, for example), or it might be that annotations would create a different experience for future readers.

In Chapter 4, I looked at the scientific books owned by Mary Astell, who wrote extensive annotations on some select texts in her library. In this chapter, I want to think less about genre and more about how Astell used her annotations to shape her reading experience, and indeed herself as a reader. Astell frequently added explanatory or organisational notes to her books. One of her most common practices was to create contents pages or indexes for her books, sometimes even despite the fact that these already existed in printed form. Her copy of Descartes’ Les Principes de la Philosophie, for example, which I discussed at length in Chapter 4, has extensive manuscript notes on the upper endpaper which acts as an index for Astell (see Figure 5.1).¹¹ For example, at the top of the page there is a line written by Astell that reads, ‘The method of Learning Pref. p14.’ This corresponds to the preface, where on page 14 there is a line that reads, ‘en suitte dequoy, pour faire bien concevoir quell dessein j’ay eu en les publiant, je voudrois icy expliquer l’ordre qu’il me semble qu’on doit tenir pour s’instruire’.¹² Astell also used a shorthand system for referring to the different sections of the book (which was in four parts). For example, one item in the manuscript index is ‘Gravity L.4.S.20’. The ‘L’ here probably stands for ‘livre’ (book) and the ‘S’ for ‘sous-titre’ (subtitle) – in the printed contents under ‘la quatriesme partie’, number 20 is ‘l’explication de la seconde action, en laquelle consiste la pesanteur’.¹³

She added similar indexes or contents pages to several other of her books, although none are quite so detailed as the Principes. In her copy of Descartes’ Les Passions de l’Ame she added her own contents page, listing the chapter number, a direct English translation of the chapter title, then the page number.¹⁴ For example, she wrote, ‘11 How ye motion of ye muscles is made 16’, which corresponds to Article XI on page 16, entitled ‘Comment se sont les mouvements des muscles’. She did not finish the contents page, for reasons unclear: she only listed the articles up to number 132, whereas the book itself has 212 articles. This process of adding a contents or index to her books shows a clear desire for Astell to be able to navigate the book easily, and gives evidence for multiple readings. She must have wanted to be able to find the section she needed quickly. This may be a reason for adding a handwritten contents when there was already a printed version, as she was able to write it in English and therefore perhaps navigate it more easily. Astell made a definite imprint on her books; by adding her own organisational notes, she was able to make her reading experience much easier and more effective for her needs.

There is also evidence of multiple re-readings in the way that Astell added marginal notes to her books. She annotated many of her texts in a mixture of pencil and pen; presumably this was not done at the same time, but shows different occasions on which Astell read the books. There is no clear distinction in the purpose of the pencil versus the pen annotations, but there are different annotations practices at play. In some instances, Astell added brief translation to the text: in the preface to Descartes’ Principes, for example, she wrote in pencil, ‘By means of w^ch’ directly above ‘Au moyen dequoy.’¹⁵ This may have been one of the first readings, when she was trying to improve her French – this is not a complex phrase, so the fact that she translated that rather than some of the more technical language indicates that she was still getting to grips with the language. She also made corrections to the printed text on occasion. On her copy of William Sancroft’s Modern Policies, she wrote ‘ye’ in the margins next to the word ‘Bible’, as no ‘the’ had been printed.¹⁶ Finally, she changed the word ‘ambiguous’ to ‘ambitious’ by crossing out the ‘gu’ and writing ‘ti’ above the text.¹⁷ Evidently there was one level of her reading which was largely concerned with understanding the text itself, either through translation or by making her own corrections.

There is also a level of reading that has a lot in common with the indexing Astell did on several of her texts. In many of her books she added short summaries of passages in the margins, acting as a reading guide. This usually took the form of a few words; on Descartes’ Principes, she wrote short notes summarising the text, such as ‘W^t Wisdom is’ next to a passage about philosophy and the nature of wisdom.¹⁸ There were also the notes referring to other texts that I discussed in Chapter 4, which allowed her to develop and add to the ideas within the text itself. She did not only do this with philosophical texts, although these were the most common ones for her to annotate. She used x’s to mark passages of interest in her copy of a Civil War pamphlet.¹⁹ She also added some cross-referencing. This was a Royalist pamphlet, arguing that armed resistance to the king was illegitimate. Most of Astell’s notes in this pamphlet were short summaries, but sometimes she referenced other reading. For example, she wrote, ‘see in contradiction to ys M Lock of Gov viz p 33, 34’ in the margins of page 3.²⁰ Dudley Diggs’ Royalist ideas would be directly contrary to Locke’s theory of the social contract between monarch and subjects; Astell was adding notes from her much more up-to-date reading, working to contextualise the text nearly half a century after its publication.

Each intervention that Astell made on the text added to and altered her own reading experience, whether they allowed her to improve her understanding of either the language or ideas, or to use the text more easily by being able to deconstruct it and find what she was looking for. This would then create a very different reading experience when she returned to the text – one altered by her own voice – and reinscribed her self-fashioning as an intellectual reader and participant in philosophical and political debates.

Anne Clifford’s annotations also provide evidence of her re-reading and structured reading, as discussed in Chapter 2. She or her scribe recorded the dates of the readings or re-readings they made of her books in the front, providing a useful record of the time and sometimes place of her reading.²¹ In her copy of Anthony Weldon’s The Court and Character of King James, opposite the title page, a scribe has written, ‘about the beginninge of June in 1669 I began to read this Booke my selfe in Appleby Castle and I & diverse of my men servants made an end of readinge of itt the 21^st of y^e same in 1669’.²² The book was annotated with both Clifford’s hand and that of a scribe, making multiple readings evident; it seems that Clifford would both read books herself and have them read to her. The annotations, such as the inscription above, are usually in Clifford’s ‘voice’ if not her hand, indicating that she would direct the scribes to write in the margins. In some of her other extant books there has been a reasonably clear divide between the contents of the scribe’s annotations and those of Clifford herself. Stephen Orgel, in studying Clifford’s copy of A Mirour for Magistrates, notes the presence of three scribal hands, as well as numerous underlinings. A Mirour was a collection of poems, first published in 1559, from the perspective of various statesmen warning about the abuse of power.²³ He identifies the main hand as that of William Watkinson, Clifford’s secretary throughout the 1660s and 1670s.²⁴ Watkinson’s annotations provided most of the information about when and where reading took place, and adopted a variety of personas.²⁵ Clifford’s annotations on the other hand, as with her copy of Argenis, are often more personal comments, particularly at points concerning her own family.

However, in The Court and Character this is not always the case. Some of Watkinson’s annotations are quite prosaic, largely just noting the names of figures mentioned in the text. However, there is also a more subjective, political perspective shown. Next to a passage describing King James I, which reads, ‘His Beard was very thin: His Tongue too large for his mouth, which ever made him speak full in the mouth, and made him drink very uncomely, as if eating his drink, which came out into the cup of each side of his mouth’, the scribe has written, ‘a righte description of Kinge James’.²⁶ James did not support Clifford’s early attempts to regain her family estates, inherited by her uncle due to an entail, and was complicit in her disinheritance when he signed an order against her following her mother’s death, allowing her husband to sign away his claim to her estates.²⁷ She recorded in her diary how ‘sometimes he used fair means & persuasions, & sometimes foul means, but I was resolved before so as nothing would move me’.²⁸ Clifford’s annotations hint towards their contentious relationship and a possible dislike on her part that continued years after his death.

Clifford’s own spiky italic annotations are of a very similar tone to those in Watkinson’s hand. She very evidently agreed with Weldon’s unfavourable impression of King James.²⁹ Next to a few lines claiming, ‘His sending Embassadours, were no lesse chargeable then dishonourable and unprofitable to him and his whole Kingdome; for he was ever abused in all Negotiations’, Clifford wrote, ‘True’ in the margins.³⁰ Moreover, she wrote ‘note’ next to an underlined description of James as ‘the wisest foole in Christendome’.³¹ She also drew on her own experience, albeit not firsthand, by writing, ‘this I have Herd’ next to a passage about a supposed plot by Buckingham to kill James.³² Clifford’s annotations may not have structured her reading in the same way that Astell’s did, but they would certainly have altered her re-reading experiences. Clifford backs up the text from her own experience and opinion, emphasising certain passages (usually about James’ shortcomings) for subsequent readers. This may include herself – in re-reading the book, which she evidently did, either aurally or directly, she may have reaffirmed her own political position and her opposition to James, and perhaps even kept her grudge alive years after his death.

Manuscript notebooks similarly provide an invaluable insight into what and how women were reading in the early modern period. What women chose to copy into their notebooks, and the ways in which they structured the entries, allows us to consider their various and complex reading habits, and the temporality thereof. Extracts copied into books involved careful thought and selection, revealing a great deal about the compiler’s own responses to the text, but also what they wanted to reveal to the world about their reading habits.

They were evidently books that were re-used and re-read beyond the initial compilation. They might pass through many hands and be read or written by many different authors. Elizabeth Lyttelton, daughter of Sir Thomas Browne, the physician and author of Religio Medico, kept a commonplace book that reveals some of the complexities of authorship in manuscript culture.³³ While the book is listed by Cambridge University’s online catalogue as belonging to Elizabeth Lyttelton, it contains the signature of her sister, Mary Browne, on both the front and end flyleaves, and according to the catalogue notes was ‘kept for the benefit of the daughters of Sir Thomas Browne, and was principally the property of his daughter Elizabeth. It contains pieces by and relating to Sir Thomas Browne, including a poem and piece of prose by him, although none of the writing is in Browne’s hand’.³⁴ Victoria Burke has suggested that Elizabeth was the scribe, identifying two distinct phases of compilation probably dating to different times in her life, evidenced by slight handwriting differences. Burke suggests that the ‘earlier entries consist primarily of religious verse, Englished extracts from the classics, proverbial couplets, and fragments from Sir Thomas Browne’s writing. Sometimes filling in blank spaces left in her earlier transcriptions, Lyttelton returned, probably after 1687, to write a mixture of religious and secular poetry and prose’.³⁵ This very clearly attests to Elizabeth’s re-reading habits – she returned to the text after several years and added to it, both showing a re-reading of the manuscript and a potential for it to be read again in the future.

One entry in particular gives a valuable insight into Elizabeth’s early reading habits. It was written on behalf of Thomas Browne, and is entitled, ‘The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read y^m all out.’³⁶ The book list includes Plutarch, various histories (largely European rather than English), travel narratives and two mentions of religious texts, namely ‘fox his book of Martyrs’ and ‘some hundreds of Sermons’.³⁷ This large, varied reading list is a relatively unusual curriculum for a young girl and the communal reading experience of father and daughter indicates that Thomas Browne was interested in his daughter’s education. Margaret King has explored the influence of certain Renaissance men on their daughters’ intellectualism, using examples of various Italian learned women whose fathers were instrumental in their early education.³⁸ Thomas Browne seems to have followed this path with Elizabeth, with whom he had a close relationship.³⁹ Lyttelton’s intellectual interests were clearly heavily influenced by her father: for example, Burke has identified several extracts in the book that came from texts he is known to have owned. Browne himself kept many commonplace books, and he and his daughter shared a love of books.⁴⁰ The predominance of religious and devotional literature in the book list and the textual extracts is reflective of many women’s reading habits at the time, at least those that they were willing to record.

Interventions by either men or women display aspects of gendered textual authority and the various uses of manuscripts that had multiple authors. An example of this gendered intervention can also be seen in the commonplace book written by Anne Ley and her husband, Roger Ley, now held in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. This book provides a useful source for looking at the interplay of gender and authorship in manuscript commonplace culture, and for thinking about reading notes as a process of memorialisation.⁴¹ In this case, a woman, Anne Ley, was the primary compiler, with notes and extracts added later by her husband Roger, who was the curate of St Leonard’s, Shoreditch. Anne wrote several poems, which appear to be her own works, but titles have been added in Roger’s hand, suggesting he undertook, in Jill Seal Millman and Gillian Wright’s words, a ‘retrospective (re)ordering of his wife’s writings’.⁴² Presumably, the book was first compiled by Anne, with Roger adding material after her death. He included a short biography of Anne at the beginning, added titles to her entries, copied out some of her personal letters and her funeral sermon and finally included sermons of his own. Millman and Wright have also cautioned that he might have edited or manipulated Anne’s works, although as it is presumed that it is her own hand, and not copied by a scribe, he could not have edited the poetry too drastically without leaving traces. His additions to the manuscript still represent an intervention, adding a layer of structure and order that Anne had not included. Her voice, therefore, is edited and structured through that of her husband, producing multiple identities depending on the point at which the reader interacted with the text.

Despite Roger’s interventions, Anne’s agency and self-fashioning in her compilation comes through. The first half of the book is taken up with Anne’s writing, including extracts from Bishop Joseph Hall’s Meditations, Anne’s own poetry and copies of sermons. It is organised under thematic headings, just as in the humanist commonplace form. Many of the poems and original writings are commenting on items that Ley read and were often highly political, and their inclusion alongside the sermons makes a clear point about her religio-political position. For example, Ley wrote a poem that Roger later entitled, ‘Upon a booke written at the beginning of the parliament 1640’. The poem sharply criticised the book, which may have been written by Stephen Marshall, part of the group who wrote, under the acronym Smectynmuus, a book outlining the Presbyterian theory of ministry in response to a publication by Joseph Hall.⁴³ Part of the poem reads:

Our Ecclesiasticks those grave learned men

Are vilifide and scornd by thy rude pen,

As subtle shallow quite deprivd of wit,

Good for no bussnesse but a hint or fit,

Foule mouthd detraction thus to slander those,

Because by them thy stile no higher rose,

Is this the way to gaine the vulgars vote,

Now made with preiudice against that coat,

On their desired ruins wilt thou raise

Thy forlorne hopes, and look for better daies.⁴⁴

The Leys were Laudians, and Anne’s scathing rebuttal shows her political insights and understanding of current events. Her suggestion that they were not going to the right to gain popular support is particularly interesting and a complex critique, rather than just dismissing the book. Despite her disgust with the publication, it is clear that she read it, and read it carefully enough to produce a poem criticising it in detail. Marie-Louise Coolahan has argued that ‘[Ley’s] wife’s texts are incorporated to his own royalist project to fashion a defiantly anti-Independent identity during the Interregnum’.⁴⁵ However, this diminishes Anne’s role, and her own political beliefs. She clearly read widely, often contrary to her own views, and was well aware of the nuances of the political conflict at the beginning of the Civil War period.

The text clearly did function as a memorial, however. Alongside Roger’s editorial interventions such as adding headings, he also transcribed several of Anne’s letters in the second half of the volume, followed by her will and an extract from her funeral sermon. The will is headed, ‘Part of that which she made in y^e nature of a will June 7^th 1636. When the plague began to breake forth more then before. She died of that sicknesse 5 yeeres and some moneths after.’⁴⁶ Roger’s additions to Anne’s text therefore move the manuscript from a set of reading and writing notes to a memorial to his wife. His choice of this particular manuscript to do so suggests that her reading notes and poems were an important part of her, and that he felt the need to preserve them as part of the memorial. This represents a more complicated construction of textual identity: Anne’s own writing indicates that she wanted to communicate very firmly her political and religious beliefs, whereas Roger’s additions altered this somewhat, bringing her personal life and her death into the picture. While we have no clear evidence for Anne re-reading this book (although, as with most commonplaces, I would argue that she probably did, not least through the process of compilation), clearly for future readers Roger’s intervention would alter their experience and perception of the texts and of Anne herself.

All of these women used their reading notes to create a textual identity for themselves which was continually in formation; on each reading and re-reading, their identity was built. Therefore, it did not just happen in the act of writing, but in the act of reading; Clifford may have stated her hatred of King James in the act of writing the note, but in re-reading the text and its interplay with her own annotations, that identity was reaffirmed and contextualised. These identities may have been philosophical, intellectual or based on networks (such as with Astell and Lyttelton), or they may have been more political, as was the case with Clifford and Ley. Of course, it is, however, too simple to parcel these identities into neat categories; each act of annotation created another facet of the self.

This affective use of re-reading was perhaps most clearly expressed by Sarah Cowper, whose extensive commonplace books also bear notes from her explaining how she used them, beyond the initial compilation. At several points she explicitly recorded re-reading her miscellanies: in one, half of which contained many scriptural extracts, she wrote, ‘This half of this Book is a Collection of Texts of Scripture w^c may be usefull to reveiw at any times 1^st Dec: 1684.’⁴⁷ In another miscellany, full of extracts from biblical commentaries, Cowper wrote on the first page, ‘Sarah Cooper 1680’, then underneath, ‘I reccomend perticulerly the paraphrase upon the Book of Ecclesiastes.’⁴⁸ The latter note was written in a shakier hand, which was characteristic of her writing after 1705, thus indicating that she returned to the compilation several decades after initially creating it.⁴⁹ This is supported by an entry in the final volume of her diary, where she wrote on May 27, 1715, ‘I am now reviewing a large manuscript which thirty-five years ago I collected from expositors of Scripture’, referring to the 1680 manuscript.⁵⁰

Cowper gave some indication of why she returned to her manuscripts in yet another religious miscellany, in which she included a preface about the compilation of the book. Reflecting on the process and her later use of the text, she wrote:

I tasked my self to write one page every day, were it possible (as I hope it is not) that I shou’d never reape other Benefitt from the perusing of the best thoughts and Meditations of learned and Good Men, yet the present diversion from my own troubled thoughts may render it sufficiently worth my Time and Labour. In my reading I have mett with some great examples of this Method. One of Queen Elizabeth, who having a perticuler ffriendship for Henry the fourth of France, never laid any thing more to Heart than his Changing his Religion. This her Greif (says her Historian) she sought to allay by reading y^e sacred Scriptures, and the writings of the Fathers, and even the Books of Philosophers, translating about that time for an amusement Boethius de Consolatione philosophiae into Elegant English. It is recorded by Suetonius of Cesar Augustus, that in his reading all sort of Authors, he cheifly observ’d and transcrib’d such wholsome precepts, or Examples, as might serve him either for publick or private use which upon occasion he produc’d for instruction or admonitions he thought himself or any other had need.⁵¹

Cowper evidently found comfort in looking back over the religious extracts she had compiled, suggesting that they provided a ‘diversion from my own troubled thoughts’. This may have been partly due to their subject matter as devotional extracts (Cowper’s piety is well documented). However, the references she makes to Queen Elizabeth and Caesar Augustus, who found succour or use in non-devotional genres, indicate that she saw worth in any form of commonplacing.

In returning to her commonplace books, Cowper was able to remove herself from a situation she found difficult, and reaffirm her own religious piety and devotion that was so central to her concept of herself.⁵² This is very similar to Clifford’s practice; she was re-fashioning herself repeatedly in her reading of her commonplace books and reading notes. This was a different process to simply re-reading a text (even to re-reading scripture, which Cowper did avidly).⁵³ In returning to her own notes and organisation, her ‘self’ was much more clearly imprinted than if she had been reading an unannotated printed book.

Marks of life

All of the examples so far have revealed women’s self-fashioning in a way that was more or less directly related to the text they were reading, annotating or excerpting. Not all women made annotations that were directly related to the subject matter of the text, however, or that so clearly reveal their reading experiences in direct relation to the text. In Chapter 1, I looked at Susanna’s Beckwith’s annotations on her Bible, which revealed a great deal of annotations about her family life, acting as a memorandum for information such as her children’s births. Beckwith’s book holds an unusual number of annotations of different kinds but she is by no means the only woman to have used her book as a repository for domestic or familial notes. The writing of memoranda, whether in combination with other notes or not, was common.⁵⁴ It was common for this to be done in Bibles, as Beckwith did, but this was not the only genre used for such marginalia.⁵⁵ William Sherman in Used Books argued for the study of what he called the ‘matriarchive’, suggesting that we need to broaden our study of annotations to include women.⁵⁶ As he points out, ‘there is some evidence (even if the surviving traces are now few and far between) that women used the printed books in their households not simply as guides to proper devotion or conduct but to store and circulate individual and collective records – in other words, in just the same way that they used manuscript compilations … readers used these blank but bounded spaces not only to register their reactions to the book but to turn the book itself into an archive – of culinary, spiritual, familial, financial, intellectual, medical, and even meteorological information’.⁵⁷ This section, therefore, will build on this idea and consider how annotations allowed women to create a sense of their self within the contexts of family life and sociability.⁵⁸

One of the most common forms of annotation for women was inscribing their signatures, often with the formulation ‘her book’, which we have seen repeatedly throughout previous chapters. Familial and social relationships are visible in these autograph inscriptions. As Scott-Warren and Fleming have suggested, the flyleaves and endpapers of a book became a place where owners and readers could demonstrate their sociable and relational identity. These relationships were often, although not always, homosocial, revealing a book as a nexus in circles of female family and friends.⁵⁹ This is clearly important for a woman’s identity: by advertising her place within such networks, she could lay claim to social standing, and advertise her political, social or intellectual allegiances.

Inscriptions attest to the fact that books were often given as gifts as part of these relationships between family and friends. On a copy of Francisco de Quintana’s The History of Don Fenise, the front flyleaf is inscribed, ‘Penelope Compton her Book g[e]uene hir by the Countes of Northapton May the 2: 1652.’⁶⁰ Below that is written ‘An Compton’ in a late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century hand. The former inscription implies a level of ceremony with the gift-giving; this was not simply the lending of a book between two friends or acquaintances, but instead was a gesture significant enough for the recipient to mark it in ink. In this case, the book was originally given by Isabella Compton (née Sackville), the Countess of Northampton, to her sister-in-law, Penelope Compton, about five years after Isabella’s marriage. The latter signature suggests that the book remained within the family, passed down to a daughter, sister or niece, or other female relative, who then felt the need to mark her own ownership. ‘An’ could have been Lady Anne Compton, who died in 1705. However, she married Hugh Cholmley in 1665/6, so if the hand is later, then she was either not using her married name or it was another Anne in the family.

A similar transaction is evident in Frances Wolfreston’s copy of Cervantes’ The Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda.⁶¹ Wolfreston has written, ‘Frances Wolfreston hor bouk geven hor by hor sister ursly medellmore’ on the flyleaf. The fact of noting this down again gives some significance to the passing of the book between sisters; Wolfreston obviously wanted some record of the transaction. She often recorded the provenance of her books. In her copy of Chaucer held at the Folger Library, she noted that her mother-in-law, Mary Wolfreston, gave her the book.⁶² This is revealing about familial relationships, and the ways in which book lending and giving formed part of a sociable transaction. Natalie Zemon Davis has discussed the role of the book as a gift in sixteenth-century France, arguing that books were ‘part of systems of gift and obligation’.⁶³ Passing books between friends and family, then, was a marker of the relationship, a way of demonstrating closeness and possibly creating a shared experience through the act of reading.

Relationships between women are not the only ones revealed in inscriptions on books. There are several examples of men and women both signing books, for example in the case of the Kemp family. Their copy of Jean-Pierre Camus’ Admirable Events is signed on the flyleaf, ‘Robt Kemp: November 16: 1651’, and then on the next page, undated but in a seventeenth-century hand, ‘Mary Kemp her Book’.⁶⁴ It is unclear what relationship Robert and Mary Kemp bore to each other; whether husband and wife, brother and sister, or father and daughter, but the dual ownership claims are interesting. They may have signed it at different times, or possibly it was indicative of disputed book ownership.

Another example of this joint or contested ownership comes from the Folger Library’s copy of Evelyn’s Publick Employment. On the inside of the front cover is written, ‘Elizabeth Herbert her Booke 1679’, and on the opposite page, ‘Nathanel Herbert his Booke 1679’.⁶⁵ Again, we cannot be certain of the exact relationship between these two, but the placement of their inscriptions, on pages facing each other, conjures an image of a (quite passive aggressive) contest over the book. Elizabeth has reiterated her claim by writing her name again, several times, on the back endpaper. These hints at familial relationships are rarely elaborated on, but such inscriptions give a partial insight into early modern intra- and inter-household connections. Books were used as part of the interaction between spouses, or other family members, in the early modern household, hinting at friendships or disagreements. Books clearly facilitated exchange in relationships, and these gifts were deemed noteworthy, either to the receiver or the giver. As evidenced by contemporary letters, lending books was very common, so it is hard to know whether these inscriptions are evidence of lending or donating the books, but either way the exchange hints at various familial and sociable relationships.

Books and notes on books could also be used to record other aspects of life, beyond demonstrating a sociable relationship. Text was at the heart of the household, and both women’s annotations on printed books and their own manuscript compilations reveal this. Some domestic annotations reflected and were influenced by the genre of the book, as in the case of Frances Wolfreston’s collection of almanacs.⁶⁶ Wolfreston included many familial notes, generally written alongside entries for the months in which the events took place.⁶⁷ For example, beside the entry for November 1666, Wolfreston wrote, ‘my hosbond did the 5 day of this month was buried the 7 day’.⁶⁸ This is very unemotional, but there are several mentions of death in the almanacs, noting the dates of her mother, brother and other relatives’ deaths. There is also information about family friends and acquaintances; on the page for September 1666, for example, Wolfreston wrote, ‘Captin Atherly was maried this eare’.⁶⁹ She recorded the comings and goings of family members when they were visiting, and also added a list of ‘Thes plais boucks i lend to cosen robart comarford in iun’ at the end of the 1670 almanac, perhaps with the view to getting them back some day.⁷⁰ In each almanac, up until 1677, the year she died, Wolfreston included marginal annotations about the lives of family members and friends, noting births, marriages and deaths. Thus the almanac, already a way of organising the year, became a more personal tool with the addition of individual notes.⁷¹

Wolfreston’s almanacs are the only ones that bear such practical, domestic notes, while her other books, if annotated at all, tend to include comments on the text itself. For example, in her copy of Shakerley Marmion’s play A Fine Companion, held in the Huntington Library, she wrote at the end of the dramatis personae, ‘a resnabell prity bouk of a usurer and his 2 daters and ther loves with other prity pasiges’.⁷² Wolfreston’s annotations were related to the text, but rarely appear to act as reading aids in the same way that Renaissance scholars may have used their marginalia. Her short comments on texts appear to act as personalised notes to enhance the reading experience, or record a personal response, but not necessarily as a way of aiding intellectual engagement.

Not all such annotations bore such a clear relation to the genre of the book, however, and reveal another facet of women’s engagement with their books. For example, some household notes can be found in William Martyn’s The Historie, and Lives, of the Kings of England, owned by the Egerton family and currently held in the Huntington Library.⁷³ The Egertons were a noble family, and John Egerton (1579–1649) was made the Earl of Bridgewater by James I. Alongside various signatures in both the front and back of the book, particularly the names Elizabeth and Frances, on the inside of the back cover someone (probably Frances Stanley Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater, and John’s wife)⁷⁴ wrote, ‘The yeare of our Lorde .1623. I did make at ashridge .3. of fine pelobeares .3. pare of a courcer sorte, and seuen pare of a corsser sort, all made at a time.’⁷⁵ Ashridge estate, in Hertfordshire, was owned by the Egerton family. ‘Pelobeares’ probably means pillowcases: Egerton was making a note of purchases of different types of pillowcases bought for the family estate.⁷⁶ The book was not simply used as a literary text; it also functioned as a place for noting domestic activities and making lists, the content of such notes far removed from the content of the book itself. It is unclear why Egerton chose to write this purchase list in this particular book: perhaps it was simply closest to hand. She may have been reading it at the time and made use of the available paper. The act of making such notes, however, changes the book’s place within the household, making a historical/political work part of the more immediate world of domestic management.

This was not an uncommon practice. There is a similar list in Thomas Herbert’s A relation of some yeares trauaile, begunne anno 1626. Into Afrique and the greater Asia, now held in Durham’s Ushaw College Library.⁷⁷ This book was signed, ‘Mary Lloyd her Booke 1684’ on the title page. On the final page, above the printer’s mark, there is a list in what appears to be Lloyd’s hand, noting ‘9 shirts & shifts – 2 table cloths – 16 napkins – 1 wastcote – 2 crav^ts – 2 aprons – 3 p^r[pair] ruffles – 3 night rails – 3 suits night clothes – 8 hand:’. As with Egerton’s note above, there is no clear relationship between the list and the book it is in; Herbert’s text is a travelogue, and the placing of the note on a blank endpage suggests that Lloyd was simply using it as a spare piece of paper. This would have an effect, however, on future readers of the book, whether Lloyd herself or others, and it changes the purpose of the book as an object, moving it far beyond the author’s original intention.

This use of a book as a repository for domestic management was often done by numerous different readers. Another example of blank pages being used for accounting comes from a copy of Hugh Plat’s Delights for the Ladies, now held in the Beinecke Library.⁷⁸ It is bound together with A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, which is often also attributed to Plat – these texts were frequently sold together.⁷⁹ This book bears evidence of multiple ownership, with several women having written their names throughout the book. The majority of these are seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century hands. On the back flyleaf there is a page of notes that has been crossed out but is still legible; it reads, ‘lad out for M^rs Carter forten penc in letters’, and underneath that, ‘lad out for M^r Carter to shaelings in leters’. It is difficult to determine, but this may well be the same hand as the inscription in the inside front flyleaf, which reads, ‘Ellenor Hatcher her Booke 1666’. Perhaps some later reader – of which there were obviously several – crossed out the accounts. This may have been because it affected their own reading experience or they wanted to remove the mark of previous readers (although the other signatures had not been crossed out).

It was not only printed books that received this treatment. Francis Cholmondeley’s commonplace book bears his signature on the back flyleaf (‘Francis Cholmondeley His Booke’), but the manuscript also carries the signature of his wife, Elizabeth, on the same page: ‘Elizabeth Cholmondeley her Booke Anno: Do: 1651’.⁸⁰ The majority of the manuscript, which contains various religious and philosophical reflections, is in Francis’ hand. However, on the front flyleaf is a list of costs in what appears to be Elizabeth’s hand, listing payments for fabrics, amongst other items.⁸¹ There was obviously some shared ownership of the manuscript, even if it was written largely in a single hand. We can only speculate as to the reasons why Elizabeth may have signed the book, and it cannot be taken as proof of readership, but her intervention in the form of her signature and cost list shows some claim to the manuscript itself, and an active participation in the creation of the book as we see it now.

Books were therefore frequently used as repositories for accounts by women. This allowed them to exert some power over the text; by writing shopping lists and records of payments on books, they brought them into the domestic sphere and adapted them for their own purposes. Some examples given here are less radical than others – Hugh Plat’s book was specifically about household management – but Egerton and Lloyd’s inscriptions on history and travel texts respectively show a certain disregard for the genre of the book that demonstrates their authority as owners or readers, as in some ways does Elizabeth Cholmondeley’s appropriation of her husband’s commonplace book. These accounts (and indeed all the ‘domestic’ annotations collected here) would be read as well as written, and would potentially alter the reading experience. For the annotators, it may make future readings more personal, stamping a sense of their own identity on the book. For other readers, it may draw them out of the text itself – something which may have irritated a reader of Hatcher’s book.

We rarely think about household accounts and lists as things that are read as well as written. However, there is clear evidence of re-reading in several women’s notebooks from the seventeenth century. A common feature of women’s manuscript notebooks is the inclusion of various different forms of extracts, such as household notes, recipes and diary entries, which do not simply reflect their literary activities but are evidence of wider reading beyond the print literary sphere. These were clearly read and re-read, both by their compilers and by others, and often had a sole female author. Their departure from the ‘traditional’ commonplace form and the lack of male intervention or authority has often led to them being overlooked in studies of active reading and note-taking, but in fact they provide valuable sources for a more comprehensive study of women’s reading habits.

Elizabeth Lowther’s commonplace book, held by the West Yorkshire Archive Service, provides a useful demonstration of this. The manuscript references the ‘landes att Marton’ and bears the name ‘Lady Elizabeth Lowther’. Marton is a parish just south of Middlesborough, now called Marton-in-Cleveland. According to the Victoria County History, the manor house there was sold by Thomas Layton in 1633 to Sir John Lowther.⁸² This was Elizabeth’s grandfather; her father, Ralph, died in 1696, at which point the manor passed to her brother John, who died without issue in 1729. Elizabeth herself was brought up at Ackworth Park in West Yorkshire, and married Robert Frank, Recorder of Pontefract. Given the name recorded on the notebook, she probably compiled it before her marriage. The manuscript contains a mixture of religious writings, letters, indentures, bills and other such documents.⁸³ It is easy to forget that the latter documents were a significant part of the everyday reading experience, particularly for women running their households. The manuscript is written in two hands, one neat secretary hand, presumably a scribe or a household clerk, and one messier italic, belonging to Lowther herself. The scribe’s hand is the most common, but Lowther has added notes to the entries, created contents tables and written some sections herself.

It is difficult to get an overall sense of the reasons behind compiling the manuscript. It seems likely that it was intended as a record of the running of the family’s property, an area for which many women of the gentry would have been responsible (although Elizabeth was unmarried at the time, which perhaps indicates she was taking on duties in preparation for marriage, or in the absence of another woman to run the household). However, there are also infrequent examples of other materials, for example the pages dedicated to ‘A Brief Accompt of the Returne of the Israelites out of Egypt, of their passage in the Wildernesse of Arabia Petrea, of their Sacrifices during their stay in the wildernesse.’⁸⁴ This page of text is accompanied by a hand-drawn map showing the lands of Egypt and Palestine. This does not appear to have been directly excerpted from any specific text, but is rather a manuscript account relying on scripture and other religious writings about the persecution of the Israelites.⁸⁵ This is the only entry that does not appear to be directly linked to Lowther and her family, and the reasons for its inclusion and placement are unclear. It was written in the scribe’s hand, with no accompanying notes by Lowther.

The book is structured by what Jonathan Gibson has called a ‘reverse casting-off of blanks’, which involves the compiler writing from both ends of the book, turning the volume upside down to start from the back of the manuscript.⁸⁶ He argues that ‘compilers will use this method if a two-part structure is necessary and if they either (a) want to leave an equal amount of space for each type of entry, or (b) do not know how much space is required by each section’.⁸⁷ This implies a clear distinction in subject matter between the two sections, which can be seen only partially in Lowther’s manuscript: the front section is largely taken up with copies of letters sent by and to her, which are also present in the end section, although there is a great deal of other material here as well. The deliberateness of the format and the way in which it was read is indicated in the heading for the contents page of the end section, written by Lowther, which reads, ‘a catalogue of all things in this boock this way wrighten’. This implies that the two sections would be read independently, treated almost as two separate manuscripts.

There is very clear evidence for Lowther’s reading of this manuscript as she wrote, at the end of the front section of the text, ‘this boock loocked over the 27^th of aprill 1689’.⁸⁸ She added the same inscription on the following page, at the end of the second section of the book, again implying that the two sections were treated as distinct (even though she ‘loocked over’ them on the same day). Lowther clearly read the book at least once, and it is possible (although there is admittedly no clear evidence for this) that this was when she added the notes to the scribe’s text, annotating her manuscript in the same way as one would a printed book. Because of the dates on some of the bills entered in the manuscript, this could have been a few years after the composition, although not very many – the documents in the manuscript largely seem to have been created over the course of the 1680s. This is likely not, then, a re-reading from far in the future, motivated by a remembrance, but perhaps a more practical need to use the book to keep track of the family’s affairs. It also served to signify Elizabeth’s place in the household and her dedication to the running of the estate, displaying her power and competency within that space.

Conclusion

In the discussion of annotating and commonplacing practices, it is often forgotten that these notes were themselves meant to be read and re-read. If we consider these practices as acts of reading as well as acts of writing, we can broaden our understanding of the reading experience itself. Throughout this book I have explored the connections between identity and reading: by looking at women’s interventions in the text, we can gain a clearer understanding of that process. Identity construction is fluid: it does not happen just once but is formed and reformed continually as a person reads and re-reads the text, gaining different dimensions every time.

As with the last two chapters, this emphasises the need to look beyond print for a fuller understanding of women’s reading habits. Women’s reading notes and manuscript books demonstrate this process of identity construction very clearly; we can read them, as Ophir suggested, as forms of life-writing. This quite clearly is a form of autobiography that uses reading as a vector for understanding and negotiating identity. In recording their interactions with texts, whether by adding notes in margins or creating manuscript commonplace books, women were able to explore and communicate multiple facets of their selves, aligning themselves with political, religious, social or economic positions. In paying attention to re-reading practices, we can see the complexities of this identity construction; we can understand the temporality and fluidity of the practice much more clearly.

Notes

1. 1.  Pamela Mackenzie and Elisabeth Davies, ‘The Once and Future Self: (Re)Reading Personal Lists, Notes, and Calendars’, in Plotting the Reading Experience: Theory, Practice, Politics, ed. Lynne McKechnie, Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad, Knut Oterholm, Magnus Persson and Paulette M. Rothbauer (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016), 149–150.

2. 2.  Mackenzie and Davies, ‘The Once and Future Self’, 150.

3. 3.  Christopher Burlinson has challenged this in his chapter on student notebooks, arguing that they were not generally re-used beyond the period of study and/or examination. However, those notebooks can be tied to a particular point in time; the commonplace books in this chapter arguably had a longer life and were less associated with a specific, time-limited use. See Christopher Burlinson, ‘The Use and Re-Use of Early Seventeenth-Century Student Notebooks: Inside and Outside the University’, in Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580–1730, ed. James Daybell and Peter Hinds (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 229–245.

4. 4.  See, for example, Ann Moss, ‘Commonplace-Rhetoric and Thought-Patterns in Early Modern Culture’, in The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences, edited by R. H. Roberts and J. M. M. Good (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 49–60; Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). Elizabeth Griffiths and Jane Whittle produced a compelling study of women’s manuscript notebooks, investigating the account books of the Norfolk-based Le Strange family, but they do not specifically connect this to reading practices. See Elizabeth Griffiths and Jane Whittle, Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth-Century Household: The World of Alice Le Strange (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). See also Jonathan Gibson, ‘Casting Off Blanks: Hidden Structures in Early Modern Paper Books’, in Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580–1730, ed. James Daybell and Peter Hinds (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 210. The boundaries between a commonplace book and other forms of manuscript compilation (such as a miscellany) are quite porous. See, for example, Fred Schurink, ‘Manuscript Commonplace Books, Literature, and Reading in Early Modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly 73, no. 3 (2010): 453–469. See Victoria E. Burke, ‘ “Memorial Books”: Commonplaces, Gender, and Manuscript Compilation in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Ars Reminiscendi: Mind and Memory in Renaissance Culture, ed. Donald Beecher and Grant Williams (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2009), 121–138; Adam Smyth, ‘Commonplace Book Culture: A List of Sixteen Traits’, in Women and Writing c.1340–c.1650: The Domestication of Print Culture, ed. Anne Lawrence-Mathers and Phillipa Hardman (York: York Medieval Press, 2010), 90–110.

5. 5.  Ella Ophir, ‘The Diary and the Commonplace Book: Self-Inscription in The Note Books of a Woman Alone’, Biography 38, no. 1 (2015): 41–55.

6. 6.  Ophir, ‘The Diary and the Commonplace Book’, 42.

7. 7.  Ophir, ‘The Diary and the Commonplace Book’, 42–43.

8. 8.  Ophir, ‘The Diary and the Commonplace Book’, 48.

9. 9.  Stephen Colclough, Consuming Texts: Readers and Reading Communities 1695–1870 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 30.

10. 10.  This idea could be applied to the journals of seventeenth-century men such as Thomas Juxon, who wrote largely about political affairs, only rarely recording events from his own life. His identity in the journal was therefore intrinsically connected to the events he reported. See Keith Lindley and David Scott, ed., The Journal of Thomas Juxon, 1644–1647, Camden Fifth Series, vol. 13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

11. 11.  René Descartes, Les Principes de la Philosophie (A Paris: Chez Theodore Girard, 1681). H.14.18, Magdalene College, Cambridge.

12. 12.  Translation: ‘Therefore, to better understand what I have published here, I would like here to explain the order which it seems to me necessary to follow to instruct oneself.’

13. 13.  Translation: ‘the fourth part … the explanation of the second action, of which consists gravity’.

14. 14.  René Descartes, Les Passions de l’Ame (A Amsterdam: Chez Lovis Elzevier, 1650). H.9.19, Magdalene College.

15. 15.  Descartes, Les Principes de la Philosophie, 18.

16. 16.  William Sancroft, Modern Policies, taken from Machiavel, Borgia, and other choice authors / by an eye-witnesse (London: Printed for Tho. Dring, 1655), 6. G.10.77, Magdalene College.

17. 17.  Sancroft, Modern Policies, 16. It is not clear why she made this change, as having looked at several editions on Sancroft’s work, this word is always printed as ‘ambiguous’, and it makes sense within the text.

18. 18.  Descartes, Les Principes de la Philosophie, 2.

19. 19.  Dudley Diggs, The vnlawfulnesse of subjects taking up armes against their soveraigne, in what case soever: together with an answer to all objections scattered in their severall bookes. And a proofe that notwithstanding such resistance as they plead for, were not damnable, yet the present warre made upon the King is so, because those cases, in which onely some men have dared to excuse it, are evidently not now; His Majesty fighting onely to preserve himselfe, and the rights of the subjects / written by Dudley Diggs, Gentleman: late fellow of All-Soules Colledge in Oxford ([London]: [s.n.], 1647). C.5.53, Magdalene College.

20. 20.  Diggs, The vnlawfulnesse of subjects, 3.

21. 21.  For more on reading and time, see Christina Lupton, Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).

22. 22.  Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James. Whereunto is now added the Court of King Charles: Continued Unto the beginning of these unhappy Times. With some Observations upon Him instead of a Character. Collected and perfected by Sir A. W. (Printed at London by R. I., 1651). WD/Hoth/A988/22, Cumbria Record Office, Kendal.

23. 23.  Harriet Archer and Andrew Hadfield, ed., A Mirror for Magistrates in Context: Literature, History and Politics in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

24. 24.  Stephen Orgel, ‘Reading Lady Anne Clifford’s A Mirovr for Magistrates’, in Lady Anne Clifford: Culture, Patronage and Gender in 17th-Century Britain, ed. Karen Hearn and Lyn Hulse (Leeds: Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 2009), 112.

25. 25.  Orgel, ‘Reading Lady Anne Clifford’s A Mirovr for Magistrates’, 112.

26. 26.  Weldon, The Court and Character of King James, 165.

27. 27.  Anne Clifford, The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, ed. D. J. H. Clifford (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1990), 18.

28. 28.  Clifford, The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, 45.

29. 29.  Weldon had a minor position in James’ household, but was dismissed by the king for writing a satire about the people of Scotland, and wrote The Court and Character as revenge (although this was not published until the 1650s). The venomous nature of the text has often been attributed to Weldon’s anti-Scots views, and has been influential on subsequent portrayals of James I. See Jenny Wormald, ‘James VI and I: Two Kings or One?’, History 68, no. 223 (1983): 187–209; Pauline Croft, King James (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

30. 30.  Weldon, The Court and Character of King James, 171.

31. 31.  Weldon, The Court and Character of King James, 173.

32. 32.  Weldon, The Court and Character of King James, 142.

33. 33.  Elizabeth Lyttelton, Commonplace Book, c.1680. MS Add 8460, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge.

34. 34.  ‘Elizabeth Lyttleton: Commonplace Book’, ArchiveSearch, Cambridge University Library, accessed September 27, 2023, collection: Elizabeth Lyttelton: Commonplace book, ArchiveSearch (cam.ac.uk).

35. 35.  Victoria E. Burke, ‘Contexts for Women’s Manuscript Miscellanies: The Case of Elizabeth Lyttelton and Sir Thomas Browne’, The Yearbook of English Studies 33, Medieval and Early Modern Miscellanies and Anthologies (2003): 318.

36. 36.  MS Add 8460, f44v, Cambridge University Library.

37. 37.  MS Add 8460, f44v–f45r.

38. 38.  Margaret L. King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 184.

39. 39.  Burke, ‘Contexts for Women’s Manuscript Miscellanies’, 319.

40. 40.  Reid Barbour, Sir Thomas Browne: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 433.

41. 41.  Manuscript commonplace book of Anne and Roger Ley, c.1623–c.1667, MS.1952.003, Clark Library, Los Angeles.

42. 42.  Jill Seal Millman and Gillian Wright, ed., Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Poetry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 77.

43. 43.  Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson, ed., Early Modern Women Poets (1520–1700): An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 259.

44. 44.  MS.1952.003, f94v, Clark Library.

45. 45.  Marie-Louise Coolahan, ‘Literary Memorialisation and the Posthumous Construction of Female Authorship’, in The Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England: Memorial Cultures of the Post Reformation, ed. Andrew Gordon and Thomas Rist (London: Routledge, 2016), 162.

46. 46.  MS.1952.003, f106r.

47. 47.  Sarah Cowper, Miscellany, c.1675–1705. D/EP F38, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, Hertford.

48. 48.  Sarah Cowper, Biblical Commentary, c.1685. D/EP F39, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies.

49. 49.  ‘Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies: D/EP F39’, Perdita, 2005, accessed September 26, 2023. Perdita: ms HRODEPF39: frames version (warwick.ac.uk).

50. 50.  Sarah Cowper, Diary, Volume 7, 1713–1716, 223. D/EP F35, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies.

51. 51.  Sarah Cowper, Miscellany, c.1690. D/EP F43, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies.

52. 52.  On Cowper’s identity, see Anne Kugler, ‘Constructing Wifely Identity: Prescription and Practice in the Life of Lady Sarah Cowper’, Journal of British Studies 40, no. 3 (2001): 291–323.

53. 53.  Sarah Cowper, Miscellany, c.1700. D/EP F44, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies.

54. 54.  This has often been attributed to the limited availability of paper in the early modern world, but Helen Smith has recently argued, convincingly, that ‘[f]ar from being paper-short, early modern England was a society in which diverse kinds of paper circulated, and were used for a wealth of purposes’. See Helen Smith, ‘ “A unique instance of art”: The Proliferating Surfaces of Early Modern Paper’, Journal of the Northern Renaissance 8 (2017): 18.

55. 55.  We can speculate that the use of the Bible for family memoranda could be due to the physicality of the book. As a large book, it not only had extensive space for notes but also would have occupied a definite physical space within the household. It, moreover, would have been a book that would have been treasured, very unlikely to be discarded, so there would be no danger of losing the notes.

56. 56.  William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

57. 57.  Sherman, Used Books, 59.

58. 58.  Reading was often intertwined with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sociability. Kate Loveman, for example, has examined information exchange, reading, book collecting and sociability in the late seventeenth century by looking at Samuel Pepys’ library and reading habits. See Kate Loveman, Samuel Pepys and his Books: Reading, News Gathering, and Sociability, 1660–1703 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). For an examination of Restoration sociability, see Susan E. Whyman, Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural World of the Verneys, 1660–1720 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); for the eighteenth-century French context and the role of the salon, see Antoine Lilti, The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

59. 59.  Victoria Burke has examined women’s participation in heterosocial literary networks, examining both annotations and commonplace books. She argues, in relation to the Shakespeare first folio inscribed by Anne Denton, that ‘Denton’s positioning of herself as part of a circle is not something commonly seen on title pages of women’s manuscripts; inscriptions declaring ownership are more typical’. This is certainly true for heterosocial interactions, but relationships between women were often inscribed on the pages of books, as will be demonstrated here. See Victoria E. Burke, ‘Reading Friends: Women’s Participation in “Masculine” Literary Culture’, in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium, ed. Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 75.

60. 60.  Francisco de Quintana, The History of Don Fenise. A New Romance, Written in Spanish by Francisco de las-Coveras. And now Englished by a Person of Honour (London: Printed for Humphrey Moseley, 1651). He67 82, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven.

61. 61.  Miguel de Cervantes, The Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda. A Northern History. Wherein, amongst the variable Fortunes of the Prince of Thule, and this Princesse of Frisland, are interlaced many Witty Discourses, Morall, Politicall, and Delightfull. The first Copie, beeing written in Spanish; translated afterward into French; and now, last, into English (London: Printed by H. L. for M. L., 1619). PQ 6329.T77 1619, Clark Library.

62. 62.  Geoffrey Chaucer, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer: newly printed with dyuers workes whiche were neuer in print before, as in the table more playnly dothe appere (Imprynted at London, by Robart Toye, [1550?]), STC 5074 (copy 2), Folger Library, Washington, DC. For more on this acquisition, see Allison Wiggins, ‘Frances Wolfreston’s Chaucer’, in Women and Writing c.1340–c.1650: The Domestication of Print Culture, ed. Anne Lawrence-Mathers and Phillipa Hardman (York: York Medieval Press, 2010), 77–89.

63. 63.  Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Beyond the Market: Books as Gifts in Sixteenth-Century France – The Prothero Lecture’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 33 (1983): 69. For more work on the book as a gift, see Jason Scott-Warren, Sir John Harington and the Book as Gift (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

64. 64.  Jean-Pierre Camus, Admirable Events: Selected out of Foure Bookes, Written in French by the Right Reverend, John Peter Camus, Bishop of Belley. Together with morall Relations, written by the same Author, and translated into English by S. Du Verger (London: Printed by Thomas Harper for William Brooks, 1639). PQ1735 C3 E9E*, Clark Library.

65. 65.  John Evelyn, Publick Employment and an Active Life with all it Appanages, Such as Fame, Command, Riches, Conversation, &c. Prefer’d to Solitude. In Reply to a late Ingenious Essay of a contrary Title (London: Printed by J. M. for H. Herringman, 1667). E3511a, Folger Library.

66. 66.  Bound collection of Poor Robin and Dade almanacks annotated by Frances Wolfreston, 1666–1679, 1690, 1693, 1702–1705. MS. Don. e. 246, Bodleian Library, Oxford. The annotations continued after Wolfreston’s last entry in 1677, and are in various hands, including that of her son, Stanford Wolfreston.

67. 67.  Many early modern owners of almanacs annotated their texts, notably John Evelyn. Adam Smyth has argued that Evelyn’s notes served as the ‘preparatory stage for his later diary writing’, seeing almanac annotations as a form of life-writing. See Adam Smyth, ‘Almanacs, Annotators and Life-Writing in Early Modern England’, English Literary Renaissance 38, no. 2 (2008): 224. Smyth has also examined Isabella Twysden’s 1647 almanac, which contained family notes as well as information about the progress of the Civil War. See Adam Smyth, Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Almanacs were popular books in the early modern household, and records of their purchase can be seen in many household account books. For example, Joyce Jeffreys recorded buying almanacs in her account book, as did Mary Gofton. See Judith M. Spicksley, ed., The Business and Household Accounts of Joyce Jeffreys, Spinster of Hereford, 1638–1648 (London: British Academy, 2015); Mary Gofton, Account book of Mary Gofton (née Hanbury, afterwards Lady Sandys, afterwards Richardson), 1645–1649, MS. Eng. e. 3651, Bodleian Library.

68. 68.  MS. Don. e. 246, f15v, Bodleian Library.

69. 69.  MS. Don. e. 246, f14r, Bodleian Library.

70. 70.  MS. Don. e. 246, f122v, Bodleian Library.

71. 71.  For more on almanacs and time, see Laura Williamson Ambrose, ‘Travel in Time: Local Travel Writing and Seventeenth-Century English Almanacs’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43, no. 2 (2013): 419–443. Almanacs are often used as ways of exploring popular culture. See Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs, 1500–1800 (London: Faber, 1979); Louise Hill Curth, English Almanacs, Astrology, and Popular Medicine, 1550–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).

72. 72.  Shakerley Marmion, A Fine Companion. Acted before the King and Queene at White-Hall, and sundrie times with great applause at the private House in Salisbury Court, By the Prince his Servants (London: Printed by Aug. Mathewes for Richard Meighen, 1633), RB 62472 Huntington Library, San Marino. For more on reading plays, see Marta Straznicky, ed., The Book of the Play: Playwrights, Stationers, and Readers in Early Modern England (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006).

73. 73.  Stephen Tabor, curator of early printed books at the Huntington, explains the process of identifying the book as part of the Bridgewater library here: Stephen Tabor, ‘Better Than Bacon’, Verso: The Blog of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, July 6, 2016, accessed August 10, 2018, www.huntington.org/verso/2018/08/better-bacon.

74. 74.  France Egerton was a literary patron and keen book collector, and her ‘Catalogue of my ladies books at London’ has been studied by Heidi Brayman Hackel, among others. See Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading in Early Modern England: Print, Gender and Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

75. 75.  William Martyn, The Historie, and Lives, of the Kings of England; from William the Conqueror, unto the end of the Reigne of King Henrie the Eight (London: Printed for John Bill, William Barret, and Henrie Fetherstone, 1615). RB 645687, Huntington Library.

76. 76.  Adam Smyth has examined records of finances and accounts as a form of autobiography, arguing that ‘the financial record … was one of the most common forms of personal documentation, or self-accounting, in early modern England’. See Adam Smyth, ‘Money, Accounting, and Life-Writing, 1600–1700: Balancing a Life’, in A History of English Autobiography, ed. Adam Smyth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 86. For a published edition of an early modern woman’s account book, see Spicksley, ed., The Business and Household Accounts of Joyce Jeffreys.

77. 77.  Thomas Herbert, A relation of some yeares trauaile, begunne anno 1626. Into Afrique and the greater Asia, especially the territories of the Persian monarchie: and some parts of the orientall Indies, and iles adiacent. Of their religion, language, habit, discent, ceremonies, and other matters concerning them. Together with the proceedings and death of the three late ambassadours: Sir D.C. Sir R.S. and the Persian Nogdi-Beg: as also the two great monarchs, the King of Persia, and the Great Mogol / By T. H. Esquier 1634. Ushaw XIII.B.5.12, Ushaw College, Durham.

78. 78.  Hugh Plat, Delights for the Ladies, to adorne their Persons, Tables, Closets, and Distillatories: With Beauties, Banquets, Perfumes, and Waters (London, Printed by H. L., 1617), 2005 970, Beinecke Library.

79. 79.  Sarah Lindenbaum, ‘A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen (1611)’, Early Modern Female Book Ownership, 2022, accessed July 13, 2023, https://earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2022/07/05/a-closet-for-ladies-and-gentlewomen-1611.

80. 80.  Francis Cholmondeley, [Commonplace book], [ca. 1652]. Osborn b103, Beinecke Library.

81. 81.  Amanda Vickery has noted the importance of house-keeping in the lives of gentry women, albeit with reference to the Georgian period, challenging the supposed separation of the domestic life of a genteel woman from the world of work that is often said to have begun in the Restoration era. See Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

82. 82.  ‘Parishes: Marton’, in A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 2, ed. William Page (London: Victoria County History, 1923), 264–268. British History Online, accessed June 20, 2019, www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/north/vol2/pp264–268.

83. 83.  Elizabeth Lowther, Commonplace Book, DD/RA/F/1, West Yorkshire Archive Service, Huddersfield.

84. 84.  DD/RA/F/1, 29.

85. 85.  The story of the Israelites was important for reformers in early modern England, in the century preceding Lowther’s manuscript, who figured the English Protestants as God’s chosen people. See Victoria Brownlee, Biblical Readings and Literary Writings in Early Modern England, 1558–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

86. 86.  Gibson, ‘Casting Off Blanks’, 209.

87. 87.  Gibson, ‘Casting Off Blanks’, 209.

88. 88.  DD/RA/F/1, 420, West Yorkshire Archive Service.