In this article, Campbell Scribner applies insights from history, philosophy, and reader theory to marginal inscriptions in nineteenth-century textbooks, providing a conjectural explanation of student boredom during the period. He contends that boredom was a dialectic and contingent experience, based on shifting notions of childhood and education, in which students navigated between public and private space and between spontaneity and convention. Ultimately, Scribner concludes, despite difficulties in documentation, that boredom constituted a crucial element of children's self-education.