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I'm fascinated by the notes people leave behind in their books -- I have a copy of Martha Finley's popular didactic novel Elsie Dinsmore with a conversation between two snarky convent-school girls scribbled on the endpapers (e.g. "Embroidery is a very bad habit, Ruth." "PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH!" "Do the same, my love, if you want to be a parson's wife.") In my current job I must take note of inscriptions as indicators of provenance, but some of them raise questions beyond who-owned-what. For example, in a copy of Thomas Randolph's Amyntas, or, The Impossible Dowry (1640), an English pastoral play, the owner has written
Okay -- what brought that on? Has Mistress Blyth found the book or its giver genuinely irksome, or is she teasing somebody? Even more mysterious is the partially illegible marginal note I found in a copy of Francis Quarles's book of epigrams, Divine Fancies (1632):Elizabeth Blyth
Her Book Given
her by no verry
good friend of EB
I'm not sure if this is an autograph or an invitation or a memorial to a particularly splendid evening (the letters are regular and well-formed, even if they occasionally don't make sense -- a fact which, taken with the date, suggests a masculine hand but doesn't preclude a feminine one). These glimpses into other people's lives are tantalizing (and cause me to spend probably more time than I ought puzzling them out ... )Isabella Petty [Hesct?] door
to ye [fothers? fathers?] Tauern
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