SOURCE: Grafton, Anthony T. “Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia: New Light on the Cultural History of Elizabethan England.” Princeton University Library Chronicle 52, no. 1 (autumn 1990): 21-4.

In the following essay, Grafton argues that Harvey's handwritten commentaries offer insights into his life, the texts he read, and the history of Elizabethan England.

In David Lodge's novel Changing Places, the frustrated Rummidge don Philip Sparrow dreams of publishing his collected examination questions. Edmund Spenser's learned and frustrated friend Gabriel Harvey may well have dreamed of publishing his collected marginal notes. His long and combative literary career ended in 1593, when the exchange of pamphlets in which Thomas Nashe publicly humiliated him was suppressed by decree. But during his earlier years in Cambridge and London as well as his forced retirement in Saffron Walden,¹ he assembled a formidable library, covering subjects that ranged from ancient history to modern languages and from the marvels of Scandinavia...