Errant Marks: Misreading, Marginalia, and Early Modern Women's Book Use

ABSTRACT: This article examines early modern women's marginalia that take the form of scribble, doodles, pen trials, smudges, and stains, often found on the pastedowns and endpapers of books. It argues that these pages of "errant marks" are examples of early modern women's authorship, correcting misreadings of this commonly encountered material that have either ignored such marks or dismissed them as examples of private inattention, disconnected from the textual and material worlds of their subject and book. By positioning these marginalia as simultaneously generic, formally diverse, and specific to particular authorial contexts, more expansive models can be developed of the forms that constitute marginalia and the agents who are considered to be marginalists, including the semi-literate or "letterate" and those educated outside the humanist schoolroom. These marks move beyond the marginalia widely recognized as humanist practice to encompass new kinds and contexts of textual marking that include practice, trial, and error as well as purposeful, public, and goal-oriented annotations performed by new kinds of authors including women, children, and the nonelite.