Lee explores, in the vast tracts of the novelist's writings, her annotations in her own beloved books, and reports: Santayana, whom she greatly admired, gets one annotation in "The Life of Reason".
She somehow managed to smile and laugh at the same time, her brilliant teeth an annotation to her laughter, her hair merrily flitting around.
We get sharply edited quotations from her rulings and dissents, handwritten annotations to her pronouncements, and a moving portrait of her long and loving marriage.
Her detailed and elaborate annotations (especially her description of how the proposed Analytical Engine could be programmed to compute Bernoulli numbers) were excellent; "the Analytical Engine," she said, "weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves".
Her character converts well to this lively book, which comes with annotations from her dad ("I was most proud of Jamie during a Hawke's Bay badminton tournament") and is formatted as a barrage of lists, quotes, tips and random musings.
Near the heart of the space is the manuscript of "Frankenstein" in Mary Shelley's own hand, the margins peppered with annotations by her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Romantic poet.
More potent even than Tatar's annotations are her choices: a formidable scholar of the unschooled, she rummages through all possible tellings and retellings to finally choose the version of a familiar story that strikes her as in one way or another definitive.
Published online by the Wall Street Journal, Jaffe's report reveals that the box contained three documents: an original revised and corrected draft of the early sections of To Kill a Mockingbird, an original typescript of Go Set a Watchman, and Lee's original copy-edited typescript of Mockingbird, including the author's changes and annotations from her editor.
Home, however intermittently, was for many years a 17th-century Gloucestershire farmhouse shared with his wife, Elizabeth, who has supplied a number of blunt, affectionate annotations to her husband's letters.
Evading Sir Timothy's ban on a biography, Mary Shelley often included in these editions her own annotations and reflections on her husband's life and work.
