Marginal Notes: Social Reading and the Literal Margins

Patrick Spedding is Head of Literary Studies at Monash University, Australia, and Associate Director of the Centre for the Book. His current research focuses on book ownership, marginalia, and reading practices in the 18th century—especially among the readers of Eliza Haywood—and the publication, distribution, and survival of 18th-century erotica. He is the author of A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood (2004), and the editor of many historical literary texts.

Paul Tankard teaches and researches in English at the University of Otago, New Zealand. His chief scholarly interests are Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, the Inklings, paratextuality, and the future of literacy. In 2017 his pioneering edition of Boswell’s journalism, Facts and Inventions, won the Bibliographical Society of America’s Mitchell Prize. He teaches writing and fantasy (particularly Tolkien and C.S Lewis) and edits the Johnson Society ofAustralia Papers.