Curiosa: Her book, and don't you forget it!

[nebroadwe]

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

Elizabeth Blyth
Her Book Given
her by no verry
good friend of EB

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):

Isabella Petty [Hesct?] door
to ye [fothers? fathers?] Tauern
16       89

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 ... )