How many of you would own up to writing in your books?

It’s a divisive issue. For some, the idea is horrifying. For others, it is an everyday part of reading. Whatever your view, each time you open a book, you leave behind evidence of you, the user: a note in the margin, a thumbprint on the cover, a folded corner acting as a bookmark, or perhaps even a crinkled edge or two from having read it in the bath.

Books live lives. They amass a biography as they pass through the hands of their creators and readers. And that’s every bit as true of medieval texts as it is of the thrillers, the fantasies and the romances (not to mention the history books) we read today.

In the case of medieval books, this lived biography can be traced through the strange assortment of doodles, notes, annotations and illustrations – things that we now call ‘marginalia’ – that inhabit the edges of these precious manuscripts.

Medieval marginalia takes many forms. It may consist of decorative schemes designed to embellish the prose. It may be tiny illustrations whose function is to lead readers to particular segments of text. It may be a child’s playful scribbles.

Marginalia was sometimes added by the original manuscript creators themselves. But, just as often, it was the handiwork of readers – decades, even centuries, after the book’s creation. What the creators and readers . left there was both strange and enlightening: killer rabbits, animal human hyDrids small gures lassoing chunks of text.

These additions may live life in the margins but, as the following examples prove, they play a key role in our interpretation of medieval books – not only in our understanding of their authors, but also the generations of readers who opened the books long after their creators were dead.