To the Gentle Reader (please bear with me)

Many of the works that I paged through over the course of my research include a “to the reader” or similarly titled address in their front matter (the pages before the main content of a book begins). This week I’ve been struggling with keeping my own ‘front matter’ of my research and thoughts organized as my writing begins. As it was, when I began my work at the library yesterday, I had fewer than 500 words that I was alright with, let alone happy with. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not someone who shrinks away from spending hours on hours working [my hours at the library this week and last week has been extensive, not to mention hours of working in the apartment], but it has been so difficult this week to feel the pressure of a first draft by next Friday and a disproportionate level of inspiration–I guess we call that writer’s block. While I was feeling cripplingly uninspired to write, I worked on simplifying matters that would make it easier once I began to write such as formatting citations and tracking down a few last secondary sources that summarize historical context that I’ve been missing.

Yesterday, I sat down and began writing what I felt like I was capable of in the moment and although I’m not sure if it’ll make its way into my first draft (and if it does, it will certainly face quite a bit of editing), I drafted my own letter to a reader. I feel like there are aspects of background that are important in understanding my paper, but aspects that don’t fit into a formal paper; particularly, how I came to this focus out of an overview of over 40 volumes and that I am cognizant of many of the gaps that remain, and that this is a speculative object study-style analysis.  As I look into the place of the annotator in early modern England and how books and readers interact, letters to the reader are fascinating to me. Writing is a relationship; while journals and writing for one’s self is often very personal and “for your eyes only”, we still write as if to an audience, to somebody, even if it is a ‘future’ self. How does an audience shape writing? That feels a bit tangential, at least for now and this blog post, so I’ll just let that pondering lie for now.

I have a long day ahead in a long week, so I’ll start to wrap this up. We had a storm last night and I didn’t sleep well on top of that. The trees outside of my writing nest (yes, I’ve made a chair nest facing one of the tall windows) are swaying in the wind today; the sky is grey. There’s no better time to write. Today I’m planning to tackle putting into words the visual analyses for at least most of my main titles of focus, which will then be coupled with individual claims and a synthesis of how these volumes play into the bigger claims of this paper.

So for now, other writing beckons. Time to cue some more Game of Thrones music.

Highlights of the week so far: participating in the Newberry’s first Empty Bowls fundraiser for hunger, a seminar ‘fun night’ Tuesday night, appreciating a roommate who enjoys cooking and baking, a Skype session with a dear friend, and countless giggles with friends over library books, lunches, Conservation lab work, and froyo.

The Rains of Cryptography and other garble on how I’m doing.

Hello, blog–it has been too long. Here’s a bit of a catch up as to what I’ve been up to.

Since I’ve last written, trees have shifted into full fledged fall color and many have begun to lose leaves in the blustery gusts that are this city’s namesake. The gusts lately have a new feeling to them, a sense of the cold winter air that will be here soon enough. Even the last few warm days seemed to be a reminder that much colder temperatures are on their way, whether we’re ready for them or not. Winter is certainly coming has been a phrase muttered a lot over this week (and not just because of a recent casting of our seminar as Game of Thrones characters)–cold weather is coming and with it, deadlines.

While moving forward, my thought process these last few weeks has felt a lot like this:

If I could try to describe the feeling of the last two weeks and feeling overwhelmed by not a lack of ideas, but an abundance of them, the sound and feeling elicited by the sound of dial up internet would be pretty accurate…yep. For a while now, I’ve felt that my research would be better utilized in making a catalog of the 40+ items I paged for future researchers to use rather than any synthesis and claims that forced, but expected for this paper. As interested as I was–and still am–in marginalia and the titles that I’d seen, my work felt forced and like I was attempting to write without any passion anymore. And when you’re starting to feel like that, sometimes you just need to take some time to think about something else, talk to dear friends, and watch The West Wing. It finally feels like thoughts have stopped buffering and started to load.

This week has seen more processing of notes and working on articulating my focus as I’ve gotten through some more transcriptions of annotated volumes that I’m going to write extensively on. Over the course of this week I stumbled upon two–well–three things that have shifted my focus and course of this project. First: the fashionable practice of cryptography in early modern England. Because of the abundance of symbols and images, I tracked down two articles on early modern cryptography. While I’d be surprised if any of the annotations I’m studying are elaborate codes that require “cracking”, I was struck while reading these articles how similarly this field read to how I’ve been thinking about marginalia and that a lot of the same factors (the idea of universal communication, writing with intention that those who should read would be able to, fashioning oneself to fit a model, the magnitude of a reciprocal relationship between an author and reader are just a few of the early ideas that first came to mind again; more on these again soon.)

Second: this week for a large part has been going back and processing photos and notes of the main volumes I know I will use in my focus. A book central to this paper is The Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio printed in 1561. This copy was annotated heavily by at least two hands; the majority of these notations are claimed by Gabriel Harvey, an annotator who signs and leaves his initials throughout the volume–some notes are even dated. I began research last week into who Harvey was and was astounded to find a lot of scholarship completed on his life and shockingly–his annotations. While there will be a lot more about Harvey and his notes and doodles soon to follow (and as a major section of this paper), I’ve found that one of his notes has been instrumental in how I’m framing this project. This note is scrawled on one of the last pages of the volume; the blank page is filled with his hand in English, Latin, and Greek.

No excellent grace, or fine cumlie behaviour without three cunning properties; a sound judgment to informe; an apt dexterite to conforme; & an earnest intention to performe.

[transcribed in original spellings; direct page numbers are yet to come for this unnumbered book–apologies for no more specific annotation currently]

This line captures motivations that I believe marginalia plays into as an action taken to inform, conform, and perform. With the realization of the similarities to cryptography and the concepts summarized in this contemporary annotation, my topic’s focus has evolved into a look at how marginalia (at least for some early modern English annotators) was more than a peripheral reaction to works and was an action to assert oneself into the company of the fashionably learned of the era. I set out into the writing process with a new focus, a new thesis, and a new attitude.

Oh, and the third gamechanger? An hour long loop of an instrumental version of The Rains of Castamere. 🙂

Getting to Know You: a look into an annotator’s mind

One of the aspects I find fascinating in marginalia and that drives this research project is the ability to gain a sense of a past reader’s motivations, understanding, and attitude towards a work–as speculative as any claims may be. During my searching through tomes on Thursday, I browsed through a title whose pages point towards an annotator of purpose. I’ll be looking at the text and context of this book again soon, but for now, here are my first thoughts and the threads to explore from these heavily annotated few pages.

I stumbled across this title the same way that I found most other works containing marginalia, through a focused advanced search on Aeon (the library system at the Newberry) for “marginalia” or “m.s. notes” [I don’t recall which exactly it was that turned it up]  and bounded by the parameters of pre-1700 and in English. The title is a mouthful–His Majesties Declaration for the dissolution of his late Privy-Council,
and for constituting a new one, : made in the Council-chamber at Whitehall, April the twentieth, 1679.–for the sake of sanity, I will refer to it as “Declaration of Dissolution”. As I compiled my final list(s) of titles to be sure to browse, this one stood out because of it’s short length–a feature that is appealing when the nature of your research is to look through every single page of any given work. The title is bound in a cloth covered hard board and while no documentation of it is included in the holding description, was probably created as a preservation method by a collector or library in the last century or so, as this pamphlet would have been created originally without any sort of permanent cover. Endpapers contemporaneous to the binding have been added, and some later repairs to pages are visible to the original pages. 

The title page of the short work–which I will classify as a pamphlet, although the correct classification of what this work would be considered is something I will continue to look into–is free from any mark of a reader save for a “10.” that appears in the upper right hand corner of the page. If this numeral points towards a price once placed on the title or a marking if it was included in another collection is unclear, and I am curious to look into how other scholars have interpreted similar marks in other works.

The thorough  annotations of this Declaration of Dissolution begins on page 3 and continue throughout the rest of the work. The title of the work is self-explanatory as to the content, but for a bit of historical context, “his majesty” is here Charles II of England, whose reign ran from 1630-1685 [as a scholar who is not great at remembering dates, I really appreciate Library of Congress subject headings including date ranges when relevant!], with this particular event occurring in 1679 and this work printed the same year.

The annotator of this copy was intentional and knowledgeable–titles of posts on the Privy Council are written in the margin and numbered over pages 3 and 4, and continue haphazardly and at different angles on pages 6 and 7. Perhaps these notes were made for quick reference, or maybe our annotator was a scholar instructed to learn the titles and hierarchy of the Council. Annotations on pages 6 and 7, entitled “Names of the Lords of His Majesties Most Honourable Privy-Council”, are curious, as marginal dates are added. Preceded by what appears to be “ob” and a symbol that I need to identify are dates for most of these members names and titles; “ob” is a Latin abbreviation for death and upon looking into a sample of these lords and their ascribed dates, it seems that the annotator was accurate in these inscriptions. Granted that I only looked into a few of these names and corresponding dates of death to make this conjecture, trusting the annotator’s knowledge and assuming that these dates are not attributed through prophecy, this
will help to place the time in which annotations were created. The latest date inscribed is 1713–will looking into the dates of death of of the unannotated on the roster place the date of annotations more specifically? I hope so!

Why were the death dates of these figures significant enough to seemingly research and record in this text? Who is behind these annotations and what more can be discerned from their handwriting?

While these are the initial thoughts that come to mind in the examination of this copy of Declaration of Dissolution, there remain a lot of unanswered questions that will continue to inform ideas and speculation behind these annotations and the history of these few pages and how they relate to the shadowy world of marginalia.

Images courtesy of the Newberry Library. Special Collections Wing C2967. 

thoughts on a Thursday.

I started writing this quick post while my last three titles of the day from Special Collections are being pulled this morning. Since Tuesday after a meeting with Ian and Marcy, I’ve been spending the mornings in Special Collections, from 9-11:30 every day before lunch, work, and processing what I saw that morning. I was granted an extension on checkpoints because of the different nature of my research, but I will still be submitting a beginning of claims and analysis by Monday, with an outline coming as soon as possible next week. And so, I have embarked on the whirling dervish of hours in Special Collections as I planned, but have focused down on subjects a bit. By the end of today’s session, I will have looked at 18 more titles this week–some of which I will look more closely at, and others that I can cross off.
This morning alone, I was able to look through 9 titles in two and a half hours–whoo! At this point, being organized has been such a help to my progress. One of the Special Collections librarians who I see most days remarked this morning about how organized I was and that a lot of professional scholars are no where near as organized or scheduled–I made myself a paging schedule divided into groups of threes, which make it easier for the Special Collections side of things. The compliment gave me an opportunity to take a breath and feel like I was doing something right, at least.
As organized as I try to be, that doesn’t stop things from getting overwhelming sometimes. This week has been tough, with a lot of stress from different aspects of life culminating and becoming more frustrating in conjunction with unrelated stress. My research and approach to my project is different than the topics and approaches of my peers, which I remind myself of, but I feel behind and intimidated when I am at a different place with research, claims, even finding relevant secondary sources–while it may not be necessarily a bad thing to be on a different course, it’s been stressful to feel behind and stalled while friends make substantial strides in their work and I just seem to accumulate more and more to look at later. Talking to Ian and Marcy earlier this week certainly helped, especially with an extension for turning in a chunk of writing. One challenge of this project is embracing speculation and the amount of conjecture that my claims are based upon; another–the one I’m working on currently–is letting go of what may be potential leads and transitioning from the ‘accumulation’ phase to analysis before I feel ready–but then again, do I ever feel ready to stop looking at more material? I don’t think so, and I don’t think that that’s going to change anytime soon; that’s part of what I find so exhilarating about research, the continuous searching. What can change is my approach to diving into analysis of what I’ve seen already and found fascinating without exasperating every avenue and flipping through every page of every relevant title because “maybe” there’s something amazing there.

I’ll spend most of tomorrow looking through 6 more sources and paging some that I’ve already identified as volumes of interest and over this weekend–which already, is expected to be pretty crazy, but fun!–beginning to put into words some of the curiosities I’ve seen in my research so far.

making strides in photo storage with the help of Cat Stevens.

This morning has been devoted to organizing and sorting through photos I have taken of the 18 sources that I have viewed so far. After a few frustrating dead ends and not being able to upload photos normally off of my phone onto my laptop (still not sure what that’s all about…), I eventually stumbled upon a solution with Google Photos. How could photo storage be that much of an issue, really? I have around 350 photos so far for these 18 sources. A huge issue of finding a way to organize my photos has finding system that can handle a huge quantity of data. Another factor in finding a platform to save photos: FREE, the most important word for a young scholar. After a minor freak out this morning before discovering the features of Google Photos (“Original” quality photos max out at 16 GB, but a smaller file size and reduced quality is unlimited), I have backed up my photos so far onto Google Photos and created individual items for every book. And through most of this process this morning, Cat Stevens NPR Tiny Desk concert  on repeat was my soundtrack.

The next step (and this afternoon) will be typing notes in the description of photos and making a list of the most interesting features and titles that I’ve seen already before diving into new works tomorrow and throughout this week. The plan for this week has been a major campaign in knocking out getting through a ton of primary sources and from there, figuring out further direction. This plan may need to be reevaluated, as we were just emailed progress checkpoints due Friday–checkpoints that at this point, feel daunting if not impossible with the schedule I’ve set up for myself. Looks like it’s time to reassess and determine if it is possible for me to have an outline and a 1250 word section of my paper written by Friday. Time to put Cat Stevens back on repeat, I think.

fun walks and visiting friends.

This morning, I embarked on my usual Saturday of a bit of sleeping in–until 9, whee!–and heading to the library. I paged through three sources from my list of works containing some marginalia, of which the list has gotten much longer.
My morning productivity was abridged as a dear friend from high school arrived for a weekend visit. We met up at the Division Street farmer’s market–another Saturday staple; of course I found him at the cheese stand. (We’re friends for good reason.) After wandering the market and catching up for a while this afternoon, we set off on a walk with a seminar friend and visited two of the Open House Chicago buildings in the Gold Coast. It was a beautiful fall day and a perfect time to show off the neighborhood. We got sushi for dinner down State Street and picked up ingredients to make cookies. A few Newberry friends joined us to hang out this evening and it was a nice way to spend a relaxing and cozy Saturday night after a long week with friends new and old. The snickerdoodles were a bit disappointing at first, but got better once they had a chance to cool down. As usual, they’ll probably be even better tomorrow morning. More on weekend adventures soon!

Lists and Lists and Lists: the joys of calendars and bullet points

1. I am a serial list maker.
2. I have an immense amount of material I need to assess and keep track of.
3. It’s time for some lists.

What help are lists? Organization, my dear reader. Wednesday evening a ‘checkpoint’ assignment of a literature review was due and probably the most helpful thing for my own progress to come out of that was really processing the distinctions of different sides of scholarship that are relevant to the topic of early modern English marginalia and female readership at the time.

As essential as secondary sources are, primary sources remain the real focus of my project; my focus is still waiting to be determined and having spent the last week focused on wrapping up class and synthesizing secondary sources, primary sources and the real heart of this project has felt very distant. But–it’s time to return to that side of things and as a guide back into that realm–lists; a lot of lists. My Zotero library (for non-Newberry readers, an digital library of sorts to organize titles and bibliographic information) has been invaluable in compiling the many lists of various library searches I’ve done in the pursuit of primary source material from early modern England with any traces of past readers. Yesterday I decided that as a visual person who organizes best with pen(cil) and paper, it was time to print a list out; my original list of titles to peruse is 6 pages long. Yesterday afternoon and this morning have been spent browsing listings, isolating contemporaneous works that made their way into my lists but from their holding descriptions appear to be free from marginalia (but may be relevant to later analysis so they’ll remain in their own print out), and identifying themes before diving into a whirling dervish of paging through books–every single page!–next week. For a breakdown of the categories and patterns of topics I’ll be looking over, I’ve made yet another list–these categories are marked on my paper copy (a new best friend) with symbols for faster reference.

I’m putting my doodling to good use and have categorized my list with the following symobls–here’s a list of the doodles and their meanings:

• 🌔 — cosmography
• † — religion
• flag — specific place/nation
• ♀ — writing pertaining to women
• witch’s hat — witchcraft!
• book — intellectual sphere/books
• tree — nature

Works that I’ve already observed–I’ve looked at 15 over the course of research so far–are marked with an eye. This list will be my companion as I continue on in primary source research and paging through so many books. Next up is figuring out a way to organize the multitudes of pictures that I take cataloging whatever marginalia I come across and at some point next week, reevaluating the patterns and themes I see across these holdings. I also need to contact the Newberry about how one seeks permission for using photos of material–I hope to have some images up next week!

I sketched up a calendar of the next few weeks and will spend the rest of the afternoon planning out when I will look at material and how to catalog my notes comprehensively. Looking at this point of my research and a blank calendar in front of me, I’m glad to be a product of the Block Plan and I think over the next few weeks, I’ll be repeating “I can do anything in 18 days”, a mantra of Cornellians. Beginning next Monday, and taking into account that I can access the library 6 days a week (although Mondays will be devoted to materials I already have, as we can’t page more material), the 18 day mark from now is November 7. Here’s to an overhaul of research and by then, bounds in writing; and of course–a focused topic will be nice.

Werifisteria and adventuring in libraries.

Today I find myself missing the wilderness. It’s that time of the year where all I want is to be snug in a cabin or tent on the edge of a lake and surrounded by trees that have swayed for centuries. I want to go on cold morning walks and to need a cup of hot coco to warm up again. At the very least, I want to wander around an apple orchard and sip hot cider. And then, it hits me–that’s really all I ever want.

Thoughts like this is escapist, I realize, especially when I realize that the images I have are manufactured ones, glossed images combining favorite memories and perceptions of an idealized future. But that doesn’t make that much of a difference when you’re feeling homesickness for a feeling. According to a Pinterest my mother sent me, “werifisteria” is an Old English word meaning “to wander through a forest in search of mystery” and even if there is no OED listing for it, I like it.

This semester I have the opportunity to embark on a new kind of adventure and in the uncharted waters of a library collection. The same wonder and fantastic little moments of illumination are there, but instead of feeling a connection to the greater wilderness, it’s to the words and reader marks on a page in front of me. The same daunting aspects of the wilderness apply to research–the immensity of things, the fear of losing your way or going down the wrong path, the heaviness of silence and being left with your own thoughts. And seeing as that’s what I feel like I’m missing, it’s time to immerse myself even more and embrace the adventure.

We had a literature review of secondary sources due last night, and while I’ll probably write about it more, it felt like it threw me off of the excitement of research. With an interest so grounded in primary sources, I began to doubt my course of interest and how all these different conversations that inform an interdisciplinary lens correlate–it was overwhelming to attempt to analyze my place in a project that yet feels very fluid and case dependent. But after a talk with Marcy and then chance to breathe after a walk and hot drink with friends this morning, I’m ready again for an adventure with a different kind of “leaf” and in a different kind of wild.

I realized on that walk this morning that more trees have started to change color. It’s a greyish day here, the kind that makes me feel productive but also necessitates holding a mug of tea and being cozy. This blog post will make it on to the blog before I head off to work for the afternoon and then I plan to take the time and make a plan of action for tackling immersion and a bombardment of Special Collections in search of marginalia. But for now, I have The Lumineers playing over my earbuds and thoughts of the Boundary Waters to keep me company.

tea time.

Today was a good day, with a lot of tea. My sister and I went to afternoon tea at the Drake Hotel downtown as a treat from my parents as a “yay, you finished the Mitchell application that you’ve spent months working on”. Growing up, my mother and two of her sisters would take Anna, our cousin Patricia, and I out for tea to celebrate all of our birthday’s once a year. We hadn’t been back in years, and even though it was just the two of us, I think we both still felt pretty fancy.

Beyond a fantastic afternoon with my sister, I caught up with good friends that I’ve been missing, and relaxed with a movie and card games with friends. It was a good, relaxing day, and I’m looking forward to the work–and rest–ahead tomorrow.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from today’s tea!

the necessary evil of a thesis statement

Friday morning saw one of the first milestones of our individual research projects: a preliminary thesis and working title was due. As a proponent for multi-sentence theses, it was a challenge to stay within the parameters we were given to draft a one sentence theses that was specific, arguable, and worthwhile. Any reader of this blog or my other work—or has even carried on a conversation with me—knows that being concise is not exactly my natural state. My theses are rarely a single sentence; usually a thesis statement is one of the last things I do in a work, often a singular statement stumbled upon as I write.

I was intimidated to come up with a thesis at this point in my research; claims and specificity seem to be as evasive as finding minuscule marginalia in a multi volume work at this point. After a long walk and dinner with friends Thursday night, I finally sat down to write down what had been rolling around my head since we were given this assignment. Embracing the hesitancy and fear that comes with a speculative research project, I set to work on distilling a thesis. And—not surprisingly—my original thesis was three (very long) sentences. This was pared down into two sentences, and over a cup of tea and some exasperation, a rather patched together single sentence.

Friday morning we met with our writing groups—peers working on research in relative areas—to go over our preliminary titles and theses. My group was perceptive, supportive, and all around phenomenal; I look forward to working with them as our projects continue and the writing process continues to evolve. We all talked about the hesitations we had with these sections so far and issues that we saw in our own and others’ work. My patched thesis became further pared down and language clarified; not completely thrown out, we agreed that the omitted section would be a good introduction or ‘companion’ statement to my thesis. To share frustrations and hold ups with peers experiencing similar challenges was very helpful. Without a concrete focus at this point and as I continue to page through immense quantities of material and establishing a background for myself in this study, my thesis is still very broad—that standard of ‘specificity’ seems very far away yet. But, there is still time and still hope, and with leads into what I may focus on, I don’t feel too hopeless.

Our professors met with us as well to give feedback, which was very helpful. With my (a bit more!) concise thesis, we talked about finding the direction of focus and about my hesitations of being speculative. In any research, to be aware of the past scholarship and finding where your work fits into that dialog. My research is almost entirely in the realm of speculation and conjecture. Marcy and Ian encouraged me to embrace this and that even though it is daunting, even as an undergrad (a phrase I’ve found myself saying a lot lately), I am still doing important and worthwhile research and have the right and drive to make claims.

A lot more helpful things were discussed yesterday morning, but these have been the things that really stick out. And so, without further wordiness, here’s my working title and working thesis:

Reading Between the Lines: Marking the Dialog of Readers in Early Modern English Marginalia

In the periphery of margins, marginal thoughts and traces of readers contribute to  an understanding of historical and social context, intellectual and popular book culture, and the place of a reader in early modern England.

Stay tuned as my research–and thesis–continue to evolve over the next weeks.