Editorial Policies

Display

Books containing one or more marks or annotations are arranged alphabetically by author and title, with a complete list of all digitized books available via the “Volumes” link in the top menu or the “Authors,” “Titles,” “Volumes,” or “Pages” links among the counters located beneath “Project Process” on the Home page. Searching of the marginalia is also provided, with results keyed to Marginalia (image title), Author, and Title. A downloadable list of types of marginalia classified on this site is available on the Marginalia Types page.  Also downloadable is the complete project metadata, which can be accessed at any time via the site footer; this includes all transcriptions and page image file names, allowing for granular searching, using the “Search” link at the top of the Home page.  

Each page containing one or more marks or annotations displays in the image window, with a tally of pages and types of marginalia on the left and a transcription pane located in the right sidebar. Each mark or annotation is recorded in the metadata scheme by location on the page (outer margin, top third, etc.), line number (on pages within the text, counting down from the top and excluding page headers, titles, ornamental paragraph breaks and the like), and writing implement (pen, pencil, etc.). Page images can also be downloaded from the site for further manipulation by visitors using their own preferred software, although users do not thereby automatically gain the right to reproduce the manipulated image.

Finally, critical introductions have been supplied for selected books with especially significant marginalia via the “Critical Introductions” button on the Home page.  All critical introductions have been subject to blind peer review prior to publication. Should you wish to submit an essay for consideration as a critical introduction, please contact the Project Director, who will coordinate the review process.

Transcription

Annotations are transcribed insofar as they are decipherable, with line breaks in the original text indicated by forward slashes. Visible words and individual letters deemed undecipherable are represented by asterisks, with missing partial or whole words signified by bracketed question marks. In cases where slashes or asterisks appear within the marginalia itself, their presence is indicated within the transcription by the bracketed word [slash] or [asterisk], enabling them to be differentiated from line breaks and unknown words. Close-up images of annotations deemed substantial (typically more than two easily-read words) appear in a separate box below the transcription pane.

Attribution

Between 1905 and 1969, the books in the John Stuart Mill Library were available to generations of Somerville undergraduates, some of whom were not shy about expressing their own opinions in the margins of Mill’s books. When recorded in ball point pen, not invented until fifteen years after Mill’s death, their marks are easy to distinguish. When recorded in pencil or wax crayon, they are much more difficult to differentiate from those made by Mill. This is especially true of books in which there are no annotations, and thus no opportunity to compare the handwriting and line thickness to known exemplars.

Complicating the process of attribution is the fact that many of the books in Somerville’s collection were inherited by John Stuart Mill from his father, who acquired many of them used. James Mill was a copious annotator of his own books, some of which were further marked by his son. Thus, there are hundreds of books in which there may be two or more sets of historically significant marks of a variety of types. In the 1980s, University of Toronto Professor and noted James Mill expert Robert Fenn made a broad, but not quite exhaustive, survey of the elder Mill’s annotations in the Somerville collection. In light of Professor Fenn’s authoritative experience deciphering and cataloguing James Mill’s handwriting, his extensive unpublished notes on the books of the John Stuart Mill Library provided an invaluable guide to resolving this aspect of the problem of attribution.