The written page is a reflection of both the world and the mind of the author who took pen in hand and wrote, ruminated, and jotted down their thoughts. We organize the page with a center, the core text that becomes the anchor of our mind. Paragraphs separate sentences into cohesive collections. Capitals and headings mark new beginnings; punctuation, final ends. And the margins, so often gloriously blank, invite that ever-elusive creature, the reader, to give an added voice to the words of the author of that anchored text.
So many of us have done it: added notes in the margins of a textbook, doodled on the edges of an assignment, maybe even added an incensed comment to a particularly poorly written book. The Internet, of course, has radically transformed the shape of the page — and our world with it. But across manuscript, print, and now eBooks and beyond, there is always the delightful freedom of those empty margins, tempting readers to respond, transform, comment, illustrate, and illuminate the page with their own thoughts and imaginations.
The term “Marginalia” encompasses everything on the fringes and periphery of the page — the notes, doodlings, rough drafts, and even refined art intended to enhance a page for its reader. They reflect the minds and worlds of readers and scribes from ages long lost, revealing how the urge to pick up a pen and scribble has remained constant in human nature even across the drifting seas of centuries with maelstrom changes in technology, society, and culture.
Simultaneously, marginalia mark significant shifts in medieval European thinking. In the 13th century, scribes began organizing writing into a rigid hierarchical order of text and, reflecting the hierarchies of authority and power within the medieval world. And in the 15th century, publishers grappled with the new technology of print, the mass production of the page challenging their understanding of text and margin, freedom, and permanence.
Marginalia can also reflect the lives of books long after their birth. Later readers sometimes leave their marks decades and centuries later, revealing shifting trades and exchanges over time. Surviving medieval manuscripts and their ideas jump from continent to continent, crossing oceans, cultures, and languages, before finally making their way to Lawrence, Kansas, to earn a happy, beloved home of rest here at Kenneth Spencer Research Library.
This is an online version of a physical exhibit that was on display in Kenneth Spencer Research Library from March through July 2025. The exhibit was created by Eve Wolynes, Special Collections Curator.
