Pater’s individual volumes of essays were republished and reprinted many times in the years following his death. The books passed from hand to hand, and entered the second-hand market, often featuring brief inscriptions which indicate that they were proffered as gifts, in addition to more revealing marks of ownership comprising underlinings and marginal annotations. This postscript considers a small sample of such books, helpful in illustrating the diversity and orientation of Pater’s posthumous readership. Ranging from an early copy of Appreciations bought as a schoolboy by an eminent English scholar to a pocket edition of the same work presented to a prospective Oxford student, these books testify to the continuing appeal of Pater’s writings. An underlying theme to be followed is the vexed question of Pater’s perceived relevance to the study of English literature while the subject itself was acquiring its institutional framework in British universities. Some indications of Pater’s American readership, and his appeal to the more flexible curricula of the ‘new universities’ of the 1960s, are also relevant to the context under consideration here.

This chapter discusses Chaucer’s language, the difficulties it posed for early modern readers, and the competing claims of superior accuracy and comprehensibility made by contemporary prints. Representing various texts in the Chaucer canon, the manuscripts discussed in this chapter have in common a unique aspect of their provenance – their words have all been corrected, glossed, or emended by different early modern annotators. Through analysis of hundreds of annotations in their manuscript context, the chapter argues that early modern readers sought to perfect the outmoded, error-prone, and sometimes illegible Chaucerian manuscript text, often on the basis of printed editions. These readerly interventions reveal contemporary anxieties about linguistic archaism and textual corruption, and strive to resolve them by recourse to glosses and readings contained in new books.

A concern for provenance, details of those who, whether individuals or institutions, had owned books formerly, was no new phenomenon. Classical and antiquarian scholars valued books not just for their associations, but also for their annotations.Other names, written inside books, were noted much more rarely. The period saw a much wider interest in earlier ownership and use.

A published paper is presented so that the author can see how it will finally appear. Annotations are added to draw attention to many different items, particularly where the publisher will put in information pertaining to its place in the scientific literature. Fonts, sizes, columns and other layout features as well as the sequence of presentation are highlighted.