‘The rich help of books’: patterns of annotation in Latin and English versions of Abraham Cowley’s Sex Libri Plantarum

Abstract

ABSTRACT Abraham Cowley’s Latin poem Sex Libri Plantarum, published posthumously in 1668, is arguably his masterpiece, yet it is relatively under-studied. Its rich annotations include scientific – mainly botanical and medical – as well as historical, linguistic, and mythological information, with many classical and early modern quotations. To date, the only published complete English translation remains the 1689 version assembled by Nahum Tate, Six Books of Plants, which features much sparser marginalia. What can these very different patterns of annotation tell us about their creators’ priorities, twenty years apart? To investigate, we quantify and systematically compare the Latin and English notes. We find that the two serve different purposes: while those in Plantarum function as a counterpoint to, and corrective dialogue with, the text, those in Six Books are mainly interpretative. The translators who collaborated on Six Books were actively, even idiosyncratically, selective about how they retained Cowley’s marginalia in English.