The first part of Mary Wroth’s unfinished romance, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (1621), infamously concludes with a conjunction; Wroth writes, “all things are prepared for the journey, all now merry, contented, nothing amisse; greife forsaken, sadnes cast off, Pamphilia is the Queene of all content, Amphilanthus ioying worthily in her; And[.]” Mary Wroth’s unresolved “And” opens to infinite possible endings for Pamphilia, including negative ones, especially given the other ambiguities of Wroth’s romance, and the anxieties frequently expressed by Pamphilia herself. However, in one extant copy of Wroth’s romance, now held by UCLA, a seventeenth century reader inscribes an ending that, as Susan Light argues, “neatly positions Pamphilia within the unambiguous and apparently cohesive roles of empress, wife and mother.” While the reader’s handwritten ending—punctuated with “So my history has an End./Finis.”—is emphatically stable, this handwritten ending also demonstrates the inherent instability of authorship, and suggests how writers and readers both make meaning together and despite one another. This inscription also suggests how the book—as an object—is always coming-into-being, and how the book—as a space—is a place where writers and readers are continuously being made anew.

This panel will focus on readerly inscriptions, annotations, markings, graffiti and anything otherwise that may be read as “superfluous” to early printed texts. In doing so, this panel will explore how readers themselves “author” or “authorize” a text, and the ways in which readers may radically delimit or expand the possibilities of any book. In focusing on readerly engagements with early printed texts, this panel hopes to show how readers—even in our age of increased surveillance and suppression—may use the book as a space to resist the stories written for them and for their own bodies, to make themselves legible, and to create new, hopeful possibilities.

This panel seeks papers on readerly inscriptions, annotations, markings, graffiti, 'marginalia' and anything thought to be superfluous in early printed texts to unlock narrative possibilities—not only for the book, but for readers' own worlds and futures. 

This panel will is part of the Northeasten Modern Language Association conference, held in Boston from March 7-10 2024. Abstracts should be submitted directly to the NeMLA portral; the ID for this panel is 20753. If you have questions about this panel or about your abstract, please email the session organizer, Audrey Gradzewicz, directly at: adg6@psu.edu.