Annotation and Alteration

Books can do many things beyond just telling a story. They can preserve and transmit knowledge, create communities, encourage critical thinking, and shape thoughts and beliefs. Beyond their immediate content, readers can transform these books into personal documents by noting down their thoughts and modifying the book’s content, or in other words, annotating and altering. These forms of input can give us insight into the different ways past readers interacted with their texts and their intentions behind doing so.

Annotations can be defined as short notes added to a text or image, serving multiple functions depending on their type. These functions may include summarising a text, recording personal observations and questions, referencing other sources, and, if used to alter the book’s existing content, making corrections. For instance, one of the items on display (a collection of religious poems) has annotations that frequently cite the Bible, demonstrating how it can link a text to an external source.

In academia, annotations play a crucial role by enabling scholars to assess published works, contribute directly to their fields, connect knowledge with future readers, and store valuable information. They have long been instrumental in expanding our collective understanding and preserving intellectual discourse. For historians of the book (those who study the book as an object and a technology), annotations offer insights into bookkeeping and reading practices, as well as the priorities and concerns of readers from the past. They remain an integral part of studying even now, as we students jot down notes onto our slides and study notes.

Another critical consideration is that annotations enable readers to impact and edit texts beyond authorial control. Alterations can be made to texts for various reasons, be it due to differing and changing personal opinions, institutional censorship, or to update new advancements in science and theology.

Through the books showcased here (Tibère, Discours Politiques Sur Tacite, The Temple, and a liturgical manuscript), we explore the art of annotation and alteration and how they transform them into a dialogue across other books and/or time. Though centuries old, these books are still being studied, referenced, annotated, altered, and presented, revealing the human continuity of thinking. They invite active engagement rather than passive reading, thus promoting further critical thinking.

Tibère, Discours Politiques Sur Tacite

Tibère, Discours Politiques Sur Tacite by du Sieur de la Mother-Josseval, d’Aronsel is a 342-year-old book written in French, and this particular copy has annotations spanning across different people and different times, as evident by the different inks and handwritings used, and what it is written on. What is most striking is the usage of post-it flags and dried flowers the readers have annotated on. The flags suggest a recent reader from the 20th to the 21st century has been referencing the text, and the flowers, though it is hard to tell when it has been placed, show how nature prevails through time. They prove that the book was never just an artifact, but a functional object and a bridge between different centuries of readers. They coexist in the same copy, showing how books can be continuously engaged with.

The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations

The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations by renowned poet George Herbert is a well-known collection of religious poems. This particular copy has carefully preserved handwritten annotations of its past owners. The rich and varied annotations have cross-references between poems, bible verses and even a transcription of verbal responses to Herbert’s Antiphony (“call-and-response”) poem. The book’s underlines, curly brackets, and marginal notes highlight how past readers may have studied and annotated literature in ways similar to modern practices. These annotations ultimately suggest how religion intersected with literature in the past and that readers today are not so different from those 300 years ago.

Liturgical Manuscript, likely from a Breviary from the 15th Century

This manuscript leaf contains liturgical instruction, typical of Roman Breviaries, which contain the service for each day to be recited by priests. Written on parchment (dried animal skin), scuff marks and multiple scripts (“fonts” of handwriting) serve as evidence of alteration. On the thick material, scraping off text could essentially “erase” it. This makes room for new writing, a common practice at a time when the reproduction of a text would have been tedious and expensive. The altered section writes about the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and has been replaced with an alternate set of prayers from the same feast. This could be due to disagreements between branches of the Roman Catholic Church, which were common at the time, especially surrounding Mariology.