I wish finally to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for supporting this work in the form of funding for a Master of Studies degree (2013-14).

Abstract This essay examines the book collecting habits and annotation practices of Thomas Connary, an Irish immigrant farmer who lived in New Hampshire in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Connary led a pious life that revolved around the use, annotation and sharing of religious books: his extant annotated books provide a revealing glimpse into the book collecting habits of that elusive category of ‘the common reader’, and into how non-elite readers imagined book utilities and the iconic status of religious books. The first part provides an overview of the many ways in which Thomas Connary interacts with his books. Here a profile is established of a somewhat eccentric reader-cum-annotator who gives us insight into the range of opportunities provided by the material book for recording and communicating readerly intensity and religious fervour. In the second part the focus is on the broader, shared cultural setting in which books are seen as precious testimonies of personal faith, and come to function as tools of social interaction in both domestic and public spheres. Underlying Connary's many and varied interactions with books is a belief that physical objects can materialize belief, and that working in them can be a devout exercise instrumental in human salvation.

Abstract This article offers new information about the life and works of Thomas Forde (b. 1624), author of The Times Anatomiz’d in Severall Characters (1647), Lusus Fortunae (1649), and Virtus Rediviva (1660-61). This new information includes details of the social relationships and literary circles of this stationers’ company apprentice. Forde’s Faenestra in Pectore: Or a Century of Familiar Letters, included as part of his Virtus Rediviva, reveals several particulars of his life hitherto unnoticed. The article concludes with an appendix in which dates are assigned to several of these letters; many of Forde’s addressees are identified as well.