Introduction: Writing Between the Lines

There is at present a rising level of scholarly and even popular interest in marginalia, which this chapter illustrates, and the authors argue, is related to contemporary anxieties about reading. Marginalia represent tensions between manuscript and print culture, between the private and the public; marginalia arise from the experience of reading, into which overlooked and threatened occupation they offer a window, gesturing against the presumed passivity of reading, and figuring the attentive reader as a potential co-creator of meaning. Each annotated text is a unique and secretive item, but historical marginalia is now very accessible online; and the practice of annotation, which was often in the past proscribed by authorities, should now serve reading in the humanities, and scholarly reading in particular, by encouraging and modelling intellectual immersion and commitment.