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Tag Archives: marginalia
Marlene Dietrich’s Marginalia
I love marginalia so much that I created an entire “tag” for it on my site. I love to read about the marginalia of famous people. The tiny markings Thomas Jefferson would place beside lines of text that … interested … Continue reading
Elvis Marginalia
Elvis was a voracious reader. He wrote in the margins of all of his books, underlining sentences obsessively (sometimes every line on the page), writing notes to himself on the side. I had to be asked to step back from … Continue reading
The Books: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, ‘Words On a Flyleaf’, by Anne Fadiman
On the essays shelf: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman Along with marginalia, I am also a bit obsessed with book inscriptions. (No surprise then that this is one of my favorite sites on the net.) … Continue reading
“St. Patrick of Armagh, Deliver Me From Writing.”
I grew up in a home with Book of Kells illustrations on the wall. During a recent trip to Ireland, I bought a couple of illustrations from Trinity College, got them framed, and they now sit on my eastern wall, … Continue reading
It’s All About the Details
Green shag carpet on the walls leading up the stairs to the Jungle Room Diagram of a football play written by Elvis for his touch football team, with notes at the bottom Elvis’ desk. Biography of Churchill, Gods From Outer … Continue reading
First editions
I ate up this interview with Matthew Haley, a books and manuscript specialist, greedily, with a spoon! None of this is news to me. I grew up with a book collector father. He was highly knowledgeable, an expert in his … Continue reading
“Happy reading, dear one!”
There are a few sites out there that consistently make me cry. Book Inscriptions is one of them Today’s entry in particular.
Christmas, 1914
A book inscription that has rendered me completely stunned and quiet. One of the best sites on the web and it’s because of stuff like that. Unbelievable. I am still reverberating with it.
Exeunt
The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long. — King Lear, … Continue reading
Hitler’s marginalia (or, to quote Eddie Izzard: “I can’t paint this tree right … I must kill everyone in the world!!”)
Marginalia is one of my favorite literary topics – and although when I buy a second-hand book, I make sure that nobody has marked it up beforehand (too distracting) – I do find studies of marginalia to be extremely interesting: … Continue reading

