It was Coleridge, a compulsive book scribbler, who first called it marginalia. Lamb would lend books to Coleridge, and they would come back annotated. Rather than being upset with his friend, Lamb val...
We learn that the lowly footnote is not really a lowly paratext in Anthony Grafton’s The Footnote; A Curious History and Chuck Zerby’s The Devil’s Details: A History of Footnotes.