Authorial Editorial Practice at Work: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poems (Ashley MS 408)

Abstract

This chapter explores how Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s mark-up, or his marginal annotations, in Ashley MS 408 reveals his familiarity with using proof-correction marks, and how he both cohered to and adapted the instruction provided in contemporary style guides, specifically Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises (1683) and John Smith’s The Printer’s Grammar (1755). Through this, a more general understanding is obtained of not only how early modern style guides influenced authors’ correction of typeset page proofs, but also how marginal spaces on the typeset page offered authors the textual landscape to communicate with, and often judge the proficiency of, stakeholders within printing houses—in this case, compositors and printers. Marginal spaces thus represented the means by which authors were able to equitably share the same working spaces as their professional counterparts.