The pen marks in my own copy of Used Books cluster in its second chapter, ‘Toward a History of the Manicule’. Littering the margins of early modern books, these pointing fingers call our attention to lines and paragraphs: ‘some of these hands are printed and some handwritten; some are clothed in the simplest of sleeves and others emerge from billowing cuffs with pendant jewels; some suggest the merest outline of a hand while others capture the sinews, joints and even nails.’ As Sherman shows, these hands are the closest thing annotators had to a visual signature. Modern readers’ handwriting is distinctive but their symbols are standardised; in the Renaissance, the reverse was true. Handwriting was doubly unrecognisable, given that an individual could use multiple ‘hands’ for different purposes and that each would ideally follow a standard model. Manicules, however, bear the impress of particular personalities, from the long fingernails of one set to the elaborate ruffs surrounding the wrists of another.
Pennsylvania | hardback
259 pp. |ISBN:
9780812240436
