Rare Book Room – Hidden messages?

One of the interesting things about “old books,” is what we can find out about their previous owners. Although we have some books in the Rare Book Room which were purchased new, most of the items have had at least one previous owner, if not a sequence of owners, so there are often traces of those previous owners, including names, dates, signatures, and, very often, “messages” they’ve left behind. Sometimes these messages are very obvious…sometimes more cryptic, decipherable only by the original writer, or close friends. The notes, sometime referred to as marginalia since they are often written in the margins of the pages, suggest that we ask questions such as :
Who wrote this, and when?
For whom, and for what purpose?
Was it spontaneous or planned?
Was it written as a personal note, for a particular person, or for a more public audience?
One old book with marginalia was described by a bookseller as “rather soiled by use.” The same copy was described by another dealer as “well and piously used.” Like beauty, the place of marginalia is in the eye of the beholder.
Here are some images of notes in some of our Rare Book Room holdings. What do you think?