Pub Res Q (2010) 26:301–302

DOI 10.1007/s12109-010-9185-0

William H. Sherman: Used Books: Marking Readers

in Renaissance England
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA, 2008, 259 pp,
$45.00, Hardcover, ISBN 978-0-8122-4043-6, $19.95, Paperback,
ISBN 978-0-8122-2084-1

Casey Brienza

Published online: 9 October 2010

Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

‘‘I have (somewhat perversely) avoided the words ‘marginalia’ and ‘reading’ in my
title—even though this is a study of both of those things,’’ remarks William H.
Sherman in his preface to Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England.
Despite being the most widely accepted terminology among book historians such as
himself, these words, he suggests, define the object of his investigation—reading
practices in Renaissance England—too narrowly. Renaissance readers did far more
with books than merely ‘‘read’’ them, and the notes, scribbles, and doodles they left
behind in the pages of their books are not of ‘‘marginal’’ importance. Instead, this
monograph argues that by studying marginalia we in the present can begin to
understand what they in the past were actually doing with books at a critical
moment in the history of humanity: the transition from manuscript to print, from
antiquity to modernity.
Sherman, currently a Professor of English at the University of York, is an avid
scholar of the Renaissance English book. His previous work, John Dee: The Politics
of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance, uses marginalia produced by
Dee himself to recuperate a rational political animal concerned with Empire from
the crazed mystic obsessed with apocalypse. Although Sherman admits here that he
did perhaps overstate his case back then, the same research methods—and the
centrality of marginalia as unit of analysis—support this new project as well. The
main difference is its sheer scope; where John Dee sought to understand the inner
workings of a single Englishman, Used Books aims to understand the inner
workings of the whole of English (literate) society.
From the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge to the Huntington
Library in San Marino, California, Sherman finds abundant evidence of what
cultural studies scholars would call active audiences in Renaissance England. These
people were not, in short, afraid to use their books resourcefully. More than one in

C. Brienza (&)
Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RQ, UK
e-mail: cb607@cam.ac.uk

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five early printed books in the Huntington Library, for example, have marginalia,
and the complexity and variety of the traces left behind by long-ago readers are
considerable. The marginalia reveal them engaging with both feelings of sympathy
and opposition to the messages encoded in print, editing and repurposing books to
suit both political and personal needs, and indexing the contents of numerous texts
and recombining their wisdom into new insights—to summarize just a few of the
ways in which these early books were used.
Still, Used Books is not so ambitious as to presume to provide an exhaustive
account of reading practices. Instead, chapters are arranged thematically into four
parts. Part II explores the uses of religious texts such as the Bible and other prayer
books, while Part III revisits Sherman’s old friend John Dee and the scrupulous
habits of an enthusiastic creator of indices improbably named Julius Caesar. Part IV
is perhaps the most accessible to the general reader, exploring the semiotics of use,
i.e. how used books, especially those with marginalia, can be considered ‘‘dirty.’’
Sherman is quick to note, however, that use—use by the right sort of person, that
is—can also become a marker of value. A used book potentially contains more
information than a clean, unused one, for it is only through signs of use that we can
glean hints about the book’s place in society and the personal lives of its readers.
However, like a skilled debater wishing to dispense with the most hardened of
skeptics first, the single strongest of Sherman’s chapters may be found in Part I.
Immediately following the Introduction, it explores the common Renaissance
practice of drawing a hand in the margin of a book pointing to a noteworthy place in
the text. The manicule (also variously called, according to Sherman, ‘‘hand, hand
director, pointing hand, pointing finger, pointer, digit, fist, mutton fist, bishop’s fist,
index, indicator, indicule, maniple, and pilcrow’’) functions according to its form, a
mark as unique as a ‘‘hand’’ written signature reminding the reader to keep a
passage in ‘‘hand.’’ A feat of sheer, subtle brilliance, this chapter is not to be missed.
All in all, Used Books is a valuable contribution to the study of readers and
reading practices, particularly in the context of the field of book history. Sadly, the
chapter on books written by women and books meant to be read by women is too
rushed to be wholly effective, yet as a whole the book is surprisingly accessible to
anyone with even cursory interest in reading, book collecting, and/or publishing. It
even indulges, on occasion, in outright fun. The chapter on manicules, for example,
actually has a few printed manicules in its margin, indicating key points. This
postmodern play gets perhaps a bit too flip at the end when Sherman invites readers
to append his text with their own marginal comments, but at least in doing so he
acknowledges an insight shared by many scholars of mediated communication—the
meaning of a text is always co-produced by both author and user.

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