H.J. Jackson

Enjoyed this academic book that covers the history and motivation of readers who annotate books. The finding are based on extensive research across libraries and other sources. I was not so interested in the long cases studies of authors who annotated, e.g, Hester Piozzi, Rupert Brooke and T.H.White. The general principles and findings made me take lots of notes, i.e. how people feel about annotating books:
-Guilt at what they cost
-Guilt at the space they take up
-Guilt at damaging them
‘Earlier readers also experienced some guilt associated with their practice of annotation’, page 74
As for motivations, page 76, ‘All narratives in which names have had to be concealed - satires, secret histories, romans a clef, allegories - invite knowing readers to reveal them’.
page 77,‘every annotated book is singular and potentially instructive’.
page 82 ‘The writer of marginalia acts on the impulse to stop reading for long enough to record a comment’.
That is exactly what I was doing now but using a separate device, my I-phone to copy this sentence, keeping an electronic copy of the sentence provides flexibility,e.g. cut and paste - with appropriate attribution.etc
Furthermore, by copying down the sentence I can think more deeply about its meaning rather than just marking the sentence with a line in the margin or brief underlining.
Surely shouting at a football match is an example of annotation - or are we just shouting at ourselves. ‘Every time ref, every time’ - or are we just talking to the referee whom one has never met before.
Page 86, 'They (the readers) do, however, expect to keep the book on their shelves in its ‘corrected’ condition, so their own copy would be, to their eyes at least, the better for their work with it. It has been customized for them - a dictionary with more words, a catalogue with extra entries, a polemical tract with a sounder position’.
I must apply what I have learnt to my copy of Gronow’s Reminiscences. The author of annotations ion that book certainly falls into the I know better category. His annotations displays personality but what was his intended audience for his annotations when he wrote them and for the future
Finally I must in future add annotations a la Thrale, e.g.
'Admirably said', 'Wisely discovered', 'Oh so it is'
Excellent.… (more)

The author's organization is interesting, but not always clear, making the book a bit difficult to follow. That being said, each chapter is interesting in its own right. The basic arrangement is thematic, rather than chronological. This leads to some repetition of examples, but the notes include intratextual references that help. The examples are numerous, but somewhat skewed to the 18th and 19th centuries. There are fewer examples or case studies from the 20th century. This is somewhat explained by the shift in attitude about marginalia being "defacement" rather than enhancement.
I am already interested in marginalia for the various reasons given by the author and therefore recommend the book to anyone else similarly interested. The author is certainly a literary critic rather than a historian per se, but there is a great deal of historical information that will lead an interested reader to a lot of other work(s). Jackson is indebted to theories of social construction, though her theoretical views are never to the fore of the work. The ideas of constructed social spaces or situations and the need to understand context place her work within the realm of postmodern (or at least new historicist) criticism.
The notes are end notes, arranged by page number ranges. I personally hate end notes, but they are worth the effort of marking your place and flipping to them. Many are discursive rather than simple citations.
I greatly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading others by this author. I am not a fan of the long 18th century but this is the latest book to make me strongly reconsider my bias and expand my reading interests.… (more)