At the weekend I was listening to a programme on Radio 3 part of which was about the rise of the foreign language phrasebook over the last three or four centuries. It was a fascinating discussion, not least because it reminded me of an old Victorian English-Hindi phrasebook I found in a bookship in Pune (India). The book was intended for the use of well-to-do British ladies and the phrases presumably chosen to reflect their likely needs as they travelled about India. I opened the book at random and found a translation of “Doctor, please help me. I am suffering from severe constipation”. In my experience as a Westerner travelling in India, constipation was the least of my worries…
Anyway, the real point of posting about this is that some of the old phrasebooks which were used to illustrate the programme had been heavily annotated by their owners. That reminded me of an discussion I’ve had with a number of people about whether they like to scribble in the margins of their books, or whether they believe this practice to be a form of sacrilege.
I’ll put my cards on the table straightaway. I like to annotate my books – especially the technical ones – and some of them have extensive commentaries written in them. I also like to mark up poems that I read; that helps me greatly to understand the structure. I don’t have a problem with scribbling in margins because I think that’s what margins are for.Why else would they be there?
This is a famous example – a page from Newton’s Principia, annotated by Leibniz:
Some of my fellow academics, however, regard such actions as scandalous and seem to think books should be venerated in their pristine state. Others probably find little use for printed books given the plethora of digitial resources now available online or via Kindles etc so this is not an issue..
I’m interested to see what the divergence of opinions is in with regard to the practice of writing in books, so here’s a poll for you to express your opinion:
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