Historically, readers have literally changed texts by writing beside them. H. J. Jackson’s Marginalia (2001) documents centuries of notes that redirected interpretation and taste. Coleridge’s published marginalia influenced how later readers saw poetry and philosophy; Herman Melville’s annotated Shakespeare shows a novelist actively wrestling with his sources. Even earlier, medieval glosses—the Glossa Ordinaria surrounding biblical text, or the layered commentaries of the Talmud—embedded ongoing conversation into the page’s architecture. In each case, the margin becomes a second voice, sometimes louder than the first, proving that bold marks do not merely reflect meaning; they can redirect it. [...]
