SOURCE: Moore Smith, G. C. Introduction to Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, edited by G. C. Moore Smith, pp. 1-76. Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head Press, 1913.

In the following excerpt, Moore Smith discusses Harvey's marginalia, his “war” with Thomas Nashe, and his career after the controversy.

Harvey's marginalia give us just what we should like to have in the case of his greater contemporaries, Spenser and Marlowe and Shakespeare. They add, it is true, only a few small details to the known facts of his life; but they throw a flood of light on the books he read, and on the thoughts he cherished in secret. When they are before us we can indeed say with Dr. E. J. L. Scott that Harvey is better known to us than almost any Elizabethan writer, though Grosart, who had no liking for him and did not even master the best-known facts of his life...