Commonplace Books: a brief history
The Commonplace book of Thomas Hutton of Nottingham, 1820s - now at Yale University
I was formally trained in Local and Regional History, and also did a reasonably long stint as an Archives Assistant in my twenties, so when we received a review from someone who had purchased one of our travellers’ notebooks and she referred to it as her new ‘Commonplace Book’, I was intrigued. I was well acquainted with the concept from a historical source/archive point of view, but it was news to me that there was a current trend for ‘Commonplacing’. What goes around, comes around!
Ever since, my curiosity has been piqued and I decided to do some research into both the history of Commonplace books and also what they might mean to the modern journaler.
A Commonplace book from the mid-seventeenth century - this page spread recording some ditties or poems.
Source: Wiki Commons
When I first started looking into Commonplace books I was surprised to see that the majority of scholarship out there was focused on the literary. They were described as journals or books where family members might write down, in an organised way, excerpts from literature they had read, and as such were logs of literary consumption. Whilst this may well be the case for some - and especially those that have survived from folks who went on to become literary figures in their own right - it wasn’t my experience of Commonplace books, which were much more varied in their content.
I love this spread from Hutton’s book. Nottingham had a barracks and so militiamen would have been a common sight in the town, no doubt a constant attraction to the local young ladies as pictured here. It looks like an illustration straight out of a Jane Austen novel!
The Commonplace books that I am more familiar with are treasure troves of social history. A cross between a journal, household manual and general repository for useful bits and pieces, they are snapshots of the interests of the people who kept them. Hutton’s, for example, had a 17 page account of an explosion that had occurred at Nottingham Canal; odes to Nottingham Ale; stories of personalities and events that had interested him… but also included entries about South Africa and the outcome of family expeditions there. White Watson, of Bakewell in Derbyshire, in 1810, was interested in the local geology, sketching strata. He was also a farmer, so his Commonplace book records details of harvests and planting, along with little snippets of local colour such as a note of initials carved by employees at Bolsover Castle, and where he might obtain ‘Hawkin’s Polygraph for writing with two pens at once’.
In an age when healthcare was costly, haphazard and people still quite superstitious, many Commonplace books contain pages dedicated to remedies and medicinal curatives, along with household hints - many of which copied verbatim from the many advertisements in almanacs, newspapers and other periodicals. A nice early published example of recipes and remedies is that of Jane Mosley’s Derbyshire Remedies (and Recipes) from 1669-1712, which has recipes in one half and remedies in the other.
Page from a 17th century, English commonplace book (housed at Yale), with directions for dressing a Neck of Mutton, making Extract of Malt and Milk Water. The latter is noted to be ‘good for ye heal(th) of ye liver, lights, lungs & comforts ye vitall spiritts’. It called for three gallons of milk ‘hott from ye cow’, sorrel, sinkfoyle (cinquefoil), strawberry leaves, burrage (borage), plantain leaves, culumbine leaves (colombine or aquilegia), fennel, sweet marjoram, saxifrage, parsley - as much as can be grasped with both hands, along with a handful of rosemary, 3oz caraway seeds, 3oz ‘good’ licorice, 3oz coriander seeds, 1oz cloves and 2 oz of nutmeg. The herbs were to be bruised in a mortar and mixed with the milk - placed in a still (presumably to produce a liquor that would keep?) and stirred twice. The mixture to be drunk morning and evening, hot or cold with some water. Purple saxifrage was used traditionally for respiratory issues. Aquilegia - now known to be toxic and carcinogenic and so to be avoided! - was used to treat coughs and colds. Borage has anti-inflammatory properties and was helpful to relieve asthma.
Image Source: Wiki Commons
As Commonplace Books were such miscellanies, you may be wondering how they were organised so that information could be easily found and retrieved. The practice itself went back to Classical Antiquity - there are records of the Greeks and Romans using them, and they continued right into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - with their hey day probably being in the 1700s. Though some attempts had been made to index Commonplace entries, many that tried it relied on alphabetised pages - which had the distinct disadvantage that some pages were crammed whilst others remained empty. The philosopher John Locke, however, famously came up with a ‘new method’ which he was encouraged by his friends to publish and that stuck.
John Locke’s New Method frontispiece. It was originally published in French as Locke was in exile at the time.
The Lockean method was simple but effective. The index relied on page numbers, and the use of the first letter of the indexed concept and its first vowel. So ‘Anecdote’ could be logged under ‘Ae’. Locke was not a big fan of learning by rote - he was quite scathing of those that filled their books simply with copied quotes and did none of the work of assimilating and learning by the development of argument and logic. Order was a hot topic in the eighteenth century. As society became more ‘polite’, with an ambition to gentrification, much emphasis was placed on self improvement and deportment, both physically and intellectually. Locke’s ordering was seen as an antidote to ‘the consequences of mental wandering and disorderly thinking’.* He would probably be in despair at how today’s society currently operates!!
Spread from a contemporary Commonplace Book - Feb 2025 from Reddit https://i.redd.it/7hwipi9qv9je1.jpeg
Commonplacing in the modern age probably isn’t so very different to what our eighteenth-century forebears were doing. It’s definitely more visual - with a nod to art and junk journaling/scrapbooking techniques - but it’s still the storehouse of useful insights, snippets of information that our ancestors created… some also use them exclusively for keeping track of their favourite literary quotes as did previous generations of writers, poets and authors. It’s also perfect for travellers!
A spread from my own travellers’ notebook, which is part bullet journal, general notebook and commonplace book.
So much of our current record keeping is digital, and whilst that has its uses and advantages, there are distinct benefits to keeping some sort of analogue book. For the most part there is a proven connection between the physical act of writing and recall/remembering. It also gives us an internal, private space to reflect, to ruminate and process thoughts, ideas and feelings. Adopting art journal techniques also gives an opportunity for creativity and personal expression, which is so important in this hectic society we find ourselves in. Commonplace journaling gives us a breathing space and an outlet to be genuinely ourselves - not so far from the Georgian idea of self-discovery and identity perhaps!
Just as there are myriad favoured supplies for bullet journaling and junk journaling and scrapbooking, so too there are preferred supplies for Commonplacing. Personally, I love the flexibility of a refillable Travelers’ Notebook, which means that I can switch out inserts as they fill up, archive them and still get to use my favourite cover for whatever I’m working on… and being able to use plain, lined or dot grid paper helps me focus my creative or academic groove respectively. Although I have dabbled with bullet journaling, it’s really too rigid for me, so the idea of a more eclectic approach suits me right down to the ground and I can see myself more consciously applying the principles of Commonplace journaling in future. I hope you’ve found this little romp through time interesting and maybe leave inspired to start (or continue!) your own Commonplacing experiments!
Katie ❤
Further reading:
Lucia Dacome, ‘Noting the Mind: commonplace books and the pursuit of the self in eighteenth-century Britain, Journal of the History of Ideas, 65/4 (Oct, 2004) *quote from p.616
Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700 (Oxford, 2000)
Modern Commonplacing
Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/
How to turn any notebook into a commonplace book: https://www.thepapermouse.com/blogs/whats-new-at-the-paper-mouse/how-to-turn-any-notebook-into-a-commonplace-book?srsltid=AfmBOorsLggiDxfNrFBuoALJYh8rLomPDvMTbjrU4CCLjLUwMW6Z_HBT
Our Scribology notebooks can be found here!
