Hacker News Reader

Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

John Milton must have been extremely wealthy. He was writing on the margins of that book, printed in 1587. These books were not manuscripts, so not as expensive as the books before Gutenberg, but still.

Some years ago I did some volunteer work where I had to go through some thousands of old books at a library and find the valuable ones. I came to the conclusion that around 1850 there was a "phase change" in printing. You could tell the books before 1850, they were works of love. After 1850, I think mass printing took off, or something, but you can feel books were not luxury items anymore.

In any case, this gentleman here has in his possession a book before 1600, and he writes on its margins. Maybe this was a form of conspicuous consumption. But just look how gorgeous that book was. And the guy just scribbled some stuff on it.

View on HN

John Milton must have been extremely wealthy. He was writing on the margins of that book, printed in 1587.

My understanding is that writing notes in the margin has always been a very normal thing to do going back to the middle ages.

> After 1850, I think mass printing took off, or something, but you can feel books were not luxury items anymore.

I guess it depends on what you think of as "mass printing", but estimates have it that in the 16th century Venice alone produced around 25,000 editions of books. You can also find references to Italy producing relatively mass amounts of paper by that time, distributed to western Europe and Constantinople through Venice. You really didn't need to be "enormously wealthy" to buy a paper book at the time. Wealthy, to some extent? Yes, moreso revealed by the fact that you were literate, but not crazy wealthy.

Also, in general, people simply often had a different relationship to books than we do today. They were not regarded as priceless objects, or as things ruined by marginalia. Writing marginalia was seen as a fundamental part of reading and owning a book, part of how one understands a book and makes it theirs. Having a personal library was as much about having the books on hand as well as having your margin notes.

I think that’s mostly survivorship bias. The vast majority of books weren’t worth keeping so few survive. They were mostly religious texts, reprints of Greek and Roman classics and the equivalent of modern cheap fiction paperbacks, like a bunch of fantasy novels about Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. They weren’t that expensive because they didn’t have anything beyond black and white print and a simple binding. The really expensive books were hand colored.

Most of the books that survive from that era are family bibles because they were the books treasured and passed down by families, rather than thrown away after reading. The book in TFA was in essence a historical reference so it makes sense he would add notes. These were literally the only places where that kind of knowledge would be stored

> I came to the conclusion that around 1850 there was a "phase change". You could tell the books before 1850, they were works of love. After 1850, I think mass printing took off, or something....

The latter half of the 1800s saw the commoditization of consumer goods as industrial manufacturing processes replaced craftsmen. I became aware of this dynamic when I started collecting textiles. The arts and crafts movement in the latter 1800s was founded in direct response to (what they perceived to be) the soulless products produced at scale in factories.

One of favorite pastimes out here in the northwest is getting old books from pay by the pound thrift stores. I've found over the years at anything past the 1880s people find worth scraping at their local thrift store. Based on the volume of them that I see it is definitely indictive of printing production of the time.

Yes - but do consider the possibility that this sort of notation will also add further value to an old book. There could be an mercenary angle, eg the possibility that this will bring in additional visitors to the Library.

This is the second paragraph from the article:

> Add one more title to that small list, as scholars recently discovered a copy of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the Phoenix Public Library, containing handwritten notes in Milton's distinctive hand. This makes the volume extra-special, since only two other books once owned by Milton also contain handwritten notes. The scholars detailed their findings in a new article published in the Times Literary Supplement.

16th century, yet only "recently discovered".

He would have had to spend even more money to buy paper.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com