Books with Manuscript

Marginal annotations to printed books are a little studied aspect of the history of books and the transmission of ideas, providing a commentary on published texts which is conventionally anonymous, critical and economical. While many annotations are no more than individual comments on or disagreements with what an author has written, in a significant number of cases marginal notes have been found to be authorial, often adding an important new dimension to the original text. This work aims to facilitate further research into this much-neglected aspect of book history by providing a systematic finding aid for books with marginalia in the general collections of The British Library. The listing includes books with manuscript annotations, inserted material such as autograph letters or drawings, and corrected proof sheets. Over 20,000 works with manuscript additions are identified (excluding works held in the Library's manuscript, map and music collections, and other selected classes of material) and the arrangement broadly follows that of "The British Library General Catalogue of Printed Books".
The work includes an index of books with authorial annotations and an index of annotators and owners.