Abstract
This chapter explores how Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s mark-up, or his marginal annotations, in Ashley MS 408 reveals his familiarity with using proof-correction marks, and how he both cohered to and adapted the instruction provided in contemporary style guides, specifically Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises (1683) and John Smith’s The Printer’s Grammar (1755). Through this, a more general understanding is obtained of not only how early modern style guides influenced authors’ correction of typeset page proofs, but also how marginal spaces on the typeset page offered authors the textual landscape to communicate with, and often judge the proficiency of, stakeholders within printing houses—in this case, compositors and printers. Marginal spaces thus represented the means by which authors were able to equitably share the same working spaces as their professional counterparts.
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Notes
- 1.
Sherman (2008, 16) reproduces Elaine Whitaker’s (1994, 235) cataloguing of Renaissance readers’ annotation practices: ‘although readers’ alterations are idiosyncratic, they fall broadly into the following scheme: I. Editing [A. Censorship, B. Affirmation,] II. Interaction [A. Devotional Use, B. Social Critique,] III. Avoidance [A. Doodling, B. Daydreaming]’.
- 2.
- 3.
See also Jackson (2001, 96).
- 4.
Jackson (2001, 7) hazards that Coleridge employed this ‘cover’ as ‘an editorial fiction’.
- 5.
- 6.
Coleridge wrote for The Critical Review in 1794 and 1796–8; see Erdman (1961, 47).
- 7.
See also Schroeder (1999, 30).
- 8.
In a letter to Cottle dated 7 March 1795, Coleridge (1956, 153–4) asked for Cottle ’s assistance with paying his accommodation bill in Bristol: ‘Can you conveniently lend me five pounds, as we want a little more than four pounds to make up our lodging bill’.
- 9.
Note that Moxon (1683) indicated the oblique be placed after the marginal copy, which is standard practice today.
- 10.
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Hargrave, J. (2019). Authorial Editorial Practice at Work: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poems (Ashley MS 408). In: The Evolution of Editorial Style in Early Modern England. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20275-0_9
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