A Seaworthy Book? Samuel Sturmy’s Mariner’s Magazine (1669) from Conception to Reception

TheJardine, Boris lure of marginaliaBooks, annotations attracts the scholar, the collector and the librarian alike. In the age of mass digital reproduction, the unique copy acquires a certain aura—and as historical interest turns to reception and social history, marks of use become clues for historian-detectives. In the Russell Library, Maynooth,Maynooth, Russell Library one volume stands out for the variety of these marks: Samuel Sturmy’sSturmy, Samuel 1669 Mariner’s MagazineSturmy, Mariner's Magazine has a scored and worn cover, a missing portrait and folding plate, paper instruments cut to shape and held together with string, two much older paper volvellesBooks, volvelles loosely laid in and, as the catalogueMaynooth, library catalogues states tantalizingly, ‘extensive ms notes including list of thirteen names’. Owing to a set of fortunate historical and archival circumstances it is possible to give context to this copy by telling the complete story this compendious book of practical mathematicsBooks, practical mathematics, from its origins in Sturmy’s experiences at sea and his relations with BristolBristol merchantsBristol, merchants and LondonLondon, virtuosi virtuosi, to its printingBooks, printing, reprinting and reception. That is part of my task here. But those extensive manuscript notes lead in another direction, to the fate of this one particular copy, which may have itself gone to sea, across the AtlanticAtlantic Ocean to the early colonies of British AmericaNorth America, British colonies. This, then, is an attempt at a comprehensive account of a single work, and also a single volume.