Looking around the library I came across some interesting book marginalias. Most of them were the name of the owner of the book or some notes about it. If you looked around the pages you could probably notice some more notes inside the book but most of them were more recent written by pen and for sure not from the 19th century. To make sure I was getting the right marginalias I relied on dates written on it that assured me the authenticity.
The first book I found was Poems by James Russell Lowell published in 1885, New York.
The first pages had a lot of annotations. Unfortunatelly it is not so easy to understand them because of the way they were written. The first one looked like a list of things to read, but that is an personal opinion, I not 100% sure. The first one doesn’t have the but the handwritting is the same as the second one that has a date.
The second page starts with “To my girls” followed by New York, Oct. 24th 1889.
The second book is Tragedy of Othello by William Shakespeare and was published in 1886, New York.
On the first page you can notice the name of the original owner of the book, Nellie J. Bates from March 1887. Unfortunatelly I couldn’t find anything about the person.
The third book is The Poetical Works of Thomas Lovell Beddoes published in 1890, England.
The first page has the name of the owner, place (Cambridge) and date (1897). Nothing was found about the owner too.
I can read these. The first is a list of poems. The second sounds like aspects of a homework assignment of things to examine in a poem.
I am looking at a small screen now, but I can read them for you later if you want.