For years, students have been cautioned against scribbling in the margins of their school books, and, until recently, book dealers regarded handwritten additions to venerable volumes as unwanted blemishes.
To antiquarian bookseller Bernard M. Rosenthal, however, such annotations were vital evidence of the interests and reactions of the books' original audience. Beginning in 1960, Mr. Rosenthal began collecting volumes with such notations -- eventually, he says, coming to feel that a book was somehow defective if it lacked such evidence of use.
The 160 volumes that comprise the Bernard M. Rosenthal Collection of 15th- and 16th-century annotated books will be on display in an exhibition titled "Renaissance Readers" opening Monday, Jan. 20, at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
The books in the exhibit document the diversity of Renaissance reading, from classical authors to patristic and biblical studies, from vernacular poetry to Reformation theology, from law and medicine to drama, farming and geography.
All of the volumes contain extensive manuscript notes, comments, criticisms and reactions to the texts by the people who first owned and read them. These include 500-year-old school books with student marginalia; 16th-century doctors' manuals with notes about their own cases; and books from the Age of Copernicus with handwritten observations by astronomers in the field. There are also books annotated by such noted scholars as Joseph Scaliger, Daniel Heinsius and Hieronymus Wolf; plays with stage directions added by 16th-century actors; the working books of lawyers and notaries; and volumes used by editors preparing new editions of the works.
Although the books on display were printed in 32 cities, the majority come from Paris and Leipzig, where local printers produced texts for university students. The Parisian volumes are largely devoted to Aristotle and philosophy, while the Leipzig imprints were primarily belles lettres, especially classical poetry. While most of the volumes are in Latin, books in Greek, Hebrew, Italian, French and German are also on display.
"Renaissance Readers" will continue through March 28 at the Beinecke Library, 121 Wall St. The library is open for exhibition viewing 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturday (closed Saturdays after March 1).