SOURCE: Relle, Eleanor. “Some New Marginalia and Poems of Gabriel Harvey.” Review of English Studies 23, no. 92 (November 1972): 401-16.

In the following essay, Relle presents an account of the marginalia in three works owned by Harvey and maintains that they shed light on the writers and books Harvey was reading, his reading habits, and his personal life and beliefs.

At the beginning of a volume in the Old Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge¹ (shelf-mark Lect 26), there are three items containing the signature and manuscript notes of Gabriel Harvey. The three are to some extent connected by subject-matter and authorship, and some of Harvey's elaborate cross-references indicate that at some time in the early 1590s he had them bound together. They are:

• (1) The Essayes of a Prentise, in the diuine Art of Poesie [by James VI of Scotland] (Thomas Vautroullier; Edinburgh, 1585)
• (2) His Maiesties Poeticall Exercises at vacant houres [by James...