Paratextual Marginalia, Early Modern Women, and Collaboration

Abstract

This chapter examines examples of paratextual marginalia by Elizabeth I and Anne Poyntz, inscribed in the fly leaves and endpapers of a print New Testament and Psalter in the years directly before Elizabeth’s accession to the throne. Tracing the ways in which this marginalia constitutes textual collaboration at multiple levels, within and without the text it appends, the chapter argues that this web of collaborative practices provide a vehicle for the queen and her subject to circulate covert political messages to her coterie readers. Elizabeth’s limited access to means of textual circulation while under house arrest in Mary Tudor’s reign meant that collaboration through marginal annotation took on a new political significance in this context, providing insights into a largely undocumented period of Elizabeth’s life and exemplifying the ways in which early modern women used marginalia as a site for active reading, and writing, for political effect.