Marginalia is hallowed ground for many readers, and over at the Guardian, Alison Flood writes about a case that brings two great Western writers together. In a discovered copy of Shakespeare’s first folio, researchers found a hand-written annotation by none other than Paradise Lost author John Milton. “The astonishing find, which academics say could be one of the most important literary discoveries of modern times, was made by Cambridge University fellow Jason Scott-Warren when he was reading an article about the anonymous annotator by Pennsylvania State University English professor Claire Bourne. Bourne’s study of this copy, which has been housed in the Free Library of Philadelphia since 1944, dated the annotator to the mid-17th century, finding them alive to ‘the sense, accuracy, and interpretative possibility of the dialogue.'”
Image Credit: First Folio in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, USA.
