[ **up: [[Note-taking]]** ] --- # Commonplace books Also known as *commonplaces*.[^1] - *See also:* [[Sudelbücher]] --- ## History The form has existed, although perhaps not with that name, since antiquity. [[Aulus Gellius (Roman author)]]’s [[Aulus Gellius. 'The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. With an English Translation'. Translated by John C. Rolfe. 1927.|Attic Nights]], for example, can be considered a commonplace book. --- [[2025-0318. Popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a “commonplace book” was a notebook used to gather quotes and excerpts from one’s literary wanderings — a kind of personalized encyclopedia of quotations.|'Popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a “commonplace book” was a notebook used to gather quotes and excerpts from one’s literary wanderings — a kind of personalized encyclopedia of quotations.]][^2] --- ### 1500s > The general concept of the commonplace book dates to the 1500‘s (though earlier precursors exist) as books became more common in society.[^3] --- ### 1600s Of the commonplace book, [[Jonathan Swift (Writer)|Jonathan Swift]] wrote: [[2025-0318. Of the commonplace book, Johnathan Swift wrote, 'a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that great wits have short memories.'|'a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that great wits have short memories.']][^4] He called the system of ‘commonplacing’ a “supplemental memory”.[^5] In 1689, [[John Locke (Philosopher)|John Locke]] wrote about [[2025-0318. John Locke 'attempted to simulate Pascal’s “hyperthymesia”, not in the mind, but upon the page' - through a system of 'commonplacing'.|attempting to simulate Blaise Pascal’s ‘hyperthymesia’ in written form—via the commonplace book]].[^2] [[2025-0318. In general, 'the commonplace book would result in a wonderfully tangled mixture of reading and writing'.|'In general, the commonplace book would result in a wonderfully tangled mixture of reading and writing, where disparate ideas could be fruitfully thrown together onto the same pages, fixed together only by a formal method (and of course similar word roots).']][^6] --- #### Structure [[2025-0318. 'It’s not a coincidence that almost all ancient, Medieval and early modern students, when they started a new commonplace book, always began by copying Seneca’s quotation down first.'|'It’s not a coincidence that almost all ancient, Medieval and early modern students, when they started a new commonplace book, always began by copying Seneca’s quotation down first.']][^7] [[2025-0318. 'It’s not a coincidence that almost all ancient, Medieval and early modern students, when they started a new commonplace book, always began by copying Seneca’s quotation down first.'|’We should follow…the examples of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in…. We also, I say, ought to copy these bees, and sift whatever we have gathered from a varied course of reading, for such things are better preserved if they are kept separate; then…we should so blend these several flavors into one delicious compound that, even though it betrays its origins, yet it nevertheless is clearly a different thing from whence it came.’]][^8] [[2025-0318. 'It’s not a coincidence that almost all ancient, Medieval and early modern students, when they started a new commonplace book, always began by copying Seneca’s quotation down first.'|’There’s no beehive without the cells, and there’s no commonplace book with headings.’]][^9] --- ## Contemporary [[2025-0318. Commonplace books are 'focused journals that serve to collect thoughts, quotes, moments of introspection, transcribed passages from reading' and anything else worth reviewing later.|Commonplace books are 'focused journals that serve to collect thoughts, quotes, moments of introspection, transcribed passages from reading' and anything else worth reviewing later.]][^10] [[2025-0318. 'The best of what I discover goes into my commonplace book. Over time, what I’ve collected begins to tell a story about how I view the world and how I understand things I don’t agree with or won’t need to know later.'|'The best of what I discover goes into my commonplace book. Over time, what I’ve collected begins to tell a story about how I view the world and how I understand things I don’t agree with or won’t need to know later.']][^11] - *See also:* [[Digital gardens]] --- ## External resources ### Public examples of (modern) commonplace books - [A Commonplace Book](https://3stages.org/quotes/_) - [Whiki](https://whitneyannetrettien.com/whiki/index.php/Main_Page) [^1]: ‘commonplace book’, *IndieWeb*, last modified 6 November 2024, https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book. [^2]: Sam Dolbear, ‘[[Dolbear, 'John Locke's Method for Common-Place Books (1685)', 2019.|John Locke's Method for Common-Place Books (1685)]]’, *The Public Domain Review*, 8 May 2019, https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685/. [^3]: ‘commonplace book’, *IndieWeb*, last modified 6 November 2024. [^4]: Sam Dolbear, ‘[[Dolbear, 'John Locke's Method for Common-Place Books (1685)', 2019.|John Locke's Method for Common-Place Books (1685)]]’. [^5]: Sam Dolbear, ‘[[Dolbear, 'John Locke's Method for Common-Place Books (1685)', 2019.|John Locke's Method for Common-Place Books (1685)]]’. [^6]: Sam Dolbear, ‘[[Dolbear, 'John Locke's Method for Common-Place Books (1685)', 2019.|John Locke's Method for Common-Place Books (1685)]]’. [^7]: John Ahern, ‘How to Make a Commonplace Book’, *Circe Institute*, 21 July 2023, https://circeinstitute.org/blog/how-to-make-a-commonplace-book/. [^8]: Seneca, quoted in John Ahern, ‘How to Make a Commonplace Book’. [^9]: John Ahern, ‘How to Make a Commonplace Book’. [^10]: Kevin Eagan, ‘The Commonplace Book as a Thinker’s Journal’, *Critical Margins* (Medium blog), 14 April 2016, https://criticalmargins.com/the-commonplace-book-as-a-thinkers-journal-4d65231f30ec. [^11]: Kevin Eagan, ‘The Commonplace Book as a Thinker’s Journal’.