May 14-19 saw me back at Somerville to photograph further marginalia in the John Stuart Mill Collection. I took roughly 6400 pictures of 5500 individual examples of marginalia found on 2500 pages in 91 bound volumes that, collectively, account for 21 new titles, all French. It was a return to the beginning of the project in some ways, as I advanced to within only two three-volume novels of Alexis de Tocqueville’s De la démocratie en Amérique, which was the very first book I photographed back in July 2015. Both John Stuart and James Mill’s hands were evident, along with others whose identities may never be known. Only a handful of books in French and Italian, along with Mill’s collection of German literature, remain.
Albert D. Pionke, Project Director