# commonplace book ![[commonplacebookmid17thcentury.jpg|300]] a commonplace book from the mid-seventeenth century commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge usually by writing information into books. they have been kept from antiquity and were kept particularly during the renaissance and in the nineteenth century. such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: sententiae (often with the compiler's responses) notes proverbs adages aphorisms maxims quotes letters poems tables of weights and measures prayers legal formulas and recipes entries are most often organised under systematic subject headings and differ functionally from journals or diaries which are chronological and introspective # overview "commonplace" is a translation of the latin term locus communis (from greek tópos koinós see literary topos) which means "a general or common topic" such as a statement of proverbial wisdom. in this original sense commonplace books were collections of such sayings such as john milton's example. 'commonplace book' is at times used with an expansive sense referring to collections by an individual in one volume which have a common theme (eg ethics) or explores several themes. the term overlaps with aspects of the terms 'anthology' or 'mixed-manuscript' in these productions but most properly refers to a collection of sayings or excerpts by an individual often collected under thematic headings commonplaces are a separate genre of writing from diaries or travelogues. commonplaces are used by readers writers students and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts; sometimes they were required of young women as evidence of ir mastery of social roles and as demonstrations of the correctness of ir upbringing. they became significant in early modern europe. as a genre commonplace books were generally private collections of information but as the amount of information grew following the invention of movable type and printing became less expensive some were published for the general public in 1685 the english enlightenment philosopher john locke wrote a treatise in french on commonplace books translated into english in 1706 as a new method of making common-place-books "in which techniques for entering proverbs quotations ideas speeches were formulated. locke gave specific advice on how to arrange material by subject and category using such key topics as love politics or religion. following the publication of ir work publishers often printed empty commonplace books with space for headings and indices to be filled in by ir users. an example is "bell's common-place book formed generally upon the principles recommended and practised by mr locke" which was published by john bell almost a century after locke's treatise. a copy of this blank commonplace was used by erasmus darwin from 1776 to 1787 and it was later used by charles darwin who called it "the great book" when composing ir grandfather's biography by the early eighteenth century they had become an information management device in which a note-taker stored quotations observations and definitions. they were used in private households to collate ethical or informative texts sometimes alongside recipes or medical formulae. for women who were excluded from formal higher education the commonplace book could be a repository of intellectual references. the gentlewoman elizabeth lyttelton kept one from the 1670s to 1713 and a typical example was published by mrs anna jameson in 1855 including headings such as ethical fragments; theological; literature and art commonplace books were used by scientists and other thinkers in the same way that a database might now be used: carl linnaeus for instance used commonplacing techniques to invent and arrange the nomenclature of ir systema naturae (which is the basis for the system used by scientists today) the commonplace system of categorised note-keeping was not restricted to books. in the twentieth century henri de lubac traveled with ir notes in a sack. erasmus of rotterdam traveled with a chest of notes including examples of well-written latin that formed the basis of ir adagio. in de copia ir method of collecting examples (ratio collegendi exampla) advocated a hierarchical but ad hoc breakdown of topics: for example the top-level might be piety and impiety under piety might come gratitude and under these headings one puts example texts. the commonplace proper would be some simple aphorism or moral possibly several that can be drawn from the example such as the crowd loves and hates thoughtlessly as a result of the development of information technology there exist various software applications that perform the functions that paper-based commonplace books served for previous generations of thinkers # history # # philosophical origins beginning in topica aristotle distinguished between forms of argumentation and referred to them as commonplaces. ey extended the idea in rhetoric where ey suggested that they also be used to explore the validity of propositions through rhetoric. cicero in ir own topica and de oratore further clarified the idea of commonplaces and applied them to public speaking. ey also created a list of commonplaces which included sententiae or wise sayings or quotations by philosophers statesmen and poets. quintilian further expanded these ideas in institutio oratoria a treatise on rhetoric education and asked ir readers to commit ir commonplaces to memory. ey also framed these commonplaces in moral and ethical overtones while there are ancient compilations by writers including pliny and diogenes laertius many authors in the renaissance credited aulus gellius as the founder of the genre with ir commonplace attic nights in the first century ad seneca the younger suggested that readers collect commonplace ideas and sententiae as if like a bee and by imitation turn them into ir own honey-like words. by late antiquity the idea of employing commonplaces in rhetorical settings was well established presumed to have been written in the fifth century stobaeus compiled an extensive two volume manuscript commonly known as the anthologies of excerpts containing 1-430 poetry and prose quotations of works of which only 315 are still extant in the twenty-first century in the sixth century boethius had translated both aristotle and cicero's work and created ir own account of commonplaces in de topicis differentiis # # florilegium by the eighth century the idea of commonplaces was used primarily in religious contexts by preachers and theologians to collect excerpted passages from the bible or from approved church fathers. early in this time period passages were collected and arranged in the order of ir appearance in the works from which they were taken but by the thirteenth century they were more commonly arranged under thematic headings. these religious anthologies were referred to as florilegia which translates as gatherings of flowers. often these collections were used by ir creators to compose sermons # # early examples precursors to the commonplace book were the records kept by roman and greek philosophers of ir thoughts and daily meditations often including quotations from other thinkers. the practice of keeping a journal such as this was particularly recommended by stoics such as seneca and marcus aurelius whose own work meditations (second century ad) was originally a private record of thoughts and quotations. the pillow book of sei shonagon a courtier of the tenth or eleventh-century japan is likewise a private book of anecdote and poetry daily thoughts and lists. however none of these includes the wider range of sources usually associated with commonplace books a number of renaissance scholars kept something resembling a commonplace book - for example leonardo da vinci who described ir notebook exactly as a commonplace book is structured: "a collection without order drawn from many papers which i have copied here hoping to arrange them later each in its place according to the subjects of which they treat." french encyclopediast jean bodin used the commonplace book as "an arsenal of 'factoids'" # # zibaldone ![[page1-220px-zibaldonedipensierivi.djvu.jpg|300]] zibaldone di pensieri written by the italian poet giacomo leopardi during the course of the fifteenth century the italian peninsula was the site of the development of two new forms of book production: the deluxe registry book and the zibaldone (or hodgepodge book.) what differentiated these two forms was ir language of composition: a vernacular. giovanni rucellai the compiler of one of the most sophisticated examples of the genre defined it as a "salad of many herbs" zibaldone were always paper codices of small or medium format - never the large desk copies of registry books or other display texts. they also lacked the lining and extensive ornamentation of other deluxe copies. rather than miniatures a zibaldone often incorporates the author's sketches. zibaldone were in cursive scripts (first chancery minuscule and later mercantile minuscule) and contained what palaeographer armando petrucci describes as "an astonishing variety of poetic and prose texts." devotional technical documentary and literary texts appear side by side in no discernible order. the juxtaposition of taxes paid currency exchange rates medicinal remedies recipes and favorite quotations from augustine and virgil portrays a developing secular literate culture by far the most popular literary selections were the works of dante alighieri francesco petrarca and giovanni boccaccio: the "three crowns" of the florentine vernacular traditions. these collections have been used by modern scholars as a source for interpreting how merchants and artisans interacted with the literature and visual arts of the florentine renaissance the best-known zibaldone is giacomo leopardi's nineteenth-century zibaldone di pensieri however it significantly departs from the early modern genre of commonplace books and is rather comparable to the intellectual diary which was practiced for example by lichtenberg joubert coleridge valery among others # # english by the seventeenth century commonplacing had become a recognised practice that was formally taught to college students in such institutions as oxford. john locke appended ir indexing scheme for commonplace books to a printing of ir an essay concerning human understanding. the commonplace tradition in which francis bacon and john milton were educated had its roots in the pedagogy of classical rhetoric and "commonplacing" persisted as a popular study technique until the early twentieth century. commonplace books were used by many key thinkers of the enlightenment with authors like the philosopher and theologian william paley using them to write books. both ralph waldo emerson and henry david thoreau were taught to keep commonplace books at harvard university (ir commonplace books survive in published form) however it was also a domestic and private practice that was particularly attractive to authors. some such as samuel taylor coleridge mark twain and virginia woolf kept messy reading notes that were intermixed with other quite various material; others such as thomas hardy followed a more formal reading-notes method that mirrored the original renaissance practice more closely. the older "clearinghouse" function of the commonplace book to condense and centralize useful and even "model" ideas and expressions became less popular over time # examples # # manuscripts **+** adelaide horatio seymour spencer nineteenth-century gentlewoman. held in the franklin library university of pennsylvania **+** glastonbury miscellany. (trinity college cambridge ms 0.9.38.) originally designed as an account book **+** isaac newton (1643-1727) mathematician and physicist. held at the university of cambridge with a digitised version freely available to view online. ey developed the calculus in a commonplace which ey called ir waste book **+** jean mielot fifteenth-century burgundian translator and author. ir book is in the bibliothèque nationale de france and the main sources for ir verses many written for court occasions **+** loci communes (pseudo-maximus) a late ninth- or early tenth-century florilegium **+** richard hill a london grocer (oxford balliol college ms 354) **+** robert reynes of acle norfolk (oxford bodleian library ms tanner 407) **+** virginia woolf twentieth-century novelist. some of ir notebooks are held in smith college massachusetts **+** zibaldone da canal merchant's commonplace book (new haven ct beinecke rare book & manuscript library ms 327) # # published examples **+** mrs. anna anderson a common place book of thoughts memories and fancies (longman brown green and longman 1855) **+** w. ross ashby (1903-1972) started a commonplace book in a journal in may 1928 as a medical student. ey kept it for 44 years until ir death at which point it occupied 25 volumes comprising 7-189 pages and was indexed with 1-600 index cards. the british library created a digital archive of ir commonplace which has been published online with extensive cross-linking based on ir original index. http://rossashby.info/index.html **+** w.h. auden a certain world (new york: the viking press 1970) **+** francis bacon the promus of formularies and elegancies longman greens and company london 1883. bacon's promus was a rough list of elegant and useful phrases gleaned from reading and conversation that bacon used as a sourcebook in writing and probably also as a promptbook for oral practice in public speaking **+** robert burns robert burns's commonplace book. 1783-1785. james cameron ewing and davidson cook. glasgow : gowans and gray ltd. 1938 **+** e.m. forster commonplace book ed. philip gardner (stanford: stanford university press 1985) **+** the houghton club which holds the fishing rights to more than a dozen miles of the river test kept a club commonplace book from 1827 - 1902 filled with manuscript text and drawings with numerous letters and drawings by members tipped in. a limited edition facsimile was printed for members (london: atelier press 2019) **+** thomas jefferson literary commonplace book (d.l. wilson ed. princeton university press 1989) **+** thomas jefferson legal commonplace book (david thomas konig and michael p. zuckert eds. princeton university press 2019) **+** ben jonson timber; or discoveries made upon men and matter as they have flow'd out of ir daily readings or had ir reflux to ir peculiar notion of the times (london 1641) **+** lovecraft h.p. (4 july 2011.) "commonplace book." h.p. lovecraft's commonplace book. wired. retrieved 5 july 2011. transcribed by bruce sterling **+** the commonplace book of elizabeth lyttelton (cambridge university press 1919) **+** john man commonplaces of christian religion (london 1578) **+** john marbeck a book of notes and commonplaces…collected and gathered out of the works of diverse singular writers and brought alphabetically into order (london 1581) **+** philip melanchthon loci communes 1512 (internet archive) **+** john milton milton's commonplace book in john milton: complete prose works gen. ed. don m. wolfe (new haven: yale university press 1953.) milton kept scholarly notes from ir reading complete with page citations to use in writing ir tracts and poems **+** ronald reagan (1911-2004) kept a commonplace book with traditional commonplace headings and using index cards which "were kept in the plastic sleeves of a black photo album." they are held at the ronald reagan presidential library. edited by ir biographer douglas brinkley ir notes were published as the book the notes: ronald reagan's private collection of stories and wisdom (harper collins 2011) # literary references to commonplacing **+** amos bronson alcott 1877: "the habit of journalizing becomes a life-long lesson in the art of composition an informal schooling for authorship. and were the process of preparing ir works for publication faithfully detailed by distinguished writers it would appear how large were ir indebtedness to ir diary and commonplaces. how carefully should we peruse shakespeare's notes used in compiling ir plays - what was ir what another's - showing how these were fashioned into the shapely whole we read how milton composed montaigne goethe: by what happy strokes of thought flashes of wit apt figures fit quotations snatched from vast fields of learning ir rich pages were wrought forth! this were to give the keys of great authorship!" amos bronson alcott table-talk of a. bronson alcott (boston: roberts brothers 1877) p. 12 **+** in arthur conan doyle's sherlock holmes stories holmes keeps numerous commonplace books which ey sometimes uses when doing research. for example in "the adventure of the veiled lodger" ey researches the newspaper reports of an old murder in a commonplace book **+** in alan moore's graphic novel providence the protagonist robert black keeps a commonplace book; ir entries into this book make up the second halves of the novel's chapters contrasting with the graphic sections **+** in lemony snicket's a series of unfortunate events a number of characters including klaus baudelaire and the quagmire triplets keep commonplace books **+** in michael ondaatje's the english patient count almásy uses ir copy of herodotus's histories as a commonplace book **+** virginia woolf mid-twentieth century: "et us take down one of those old notebooks which we have all at one time or another had a passion for beginning. most of the pages are blank it is true; but at the beginning we shall find a certain number very beautifully covered with a strikingly legible hand-writing. here we have written down the names of great writers in ir order of merit; here we have copied out fine passages from the classics; here are lists of books to be read; and here most interesting of all lists of books that have actually been read as the reader testifies with some youthful vanity by a dash of red ink." virginia woolf "hours in a library" granite and rainbow: essays by virginia woolf (new york: harcourt brace and co. 1958) p. 25 # see also **+** attic nights **+** biji (chinese literature) a similar chinese genre **+** book of shadows **+** bullet journal **+** card file **+** commentarii **+** family cookbooks **+** hypomnema **+** knowledge organisation **+** memex **+** memoranda books **+** miscellany **+** notebook (style) **+** notetaking - comparison of notetaking software **+** personal information management - list of personal information managers **+** personal knowledge base **+** personal knowledge management **+** personal wiki - list of wiki software § personal wiki software **+** reference management software **+** sammelband **+** silva rerum (aka sylvae ("forests")) **+** sudelbücher **+** swipe file **+** table-book **+** tag (metadata) § knowledge tags **+** thesaurus ("treasure chests") **+** vade mecum ("go with me") or handbook **+** burke victoria e. recent studies in commonplace books. english literary renaissance. the university of chicago press. 43 (1 (winter 2013)): 153-177. doi: 10.2307/43607607. retrieved 3 august 2021 - a thorough bibliography of research and writing on commonplace books with associated notes **+** havens earle (2001.) commonplace books: a history of manuscripts and printed books from antiquity to the twentieth century. yale university # # handbooks influential treatises handbooks and books in the history of the commonplace tradition **+** desiderius erasmus de duplici copia verborum ac rerum at the internet archive. cologne 1540 **+** desiderius erasmus de ratione studii et instituendi pueros comentarii totidem **+** henry peacham the garden of eloquence: conteyning the figures of grammar and rhetorick. london 1577 - one of the first handbooks in english **+** joachim camerarius elementa rhetoricae. basel- **+** john brinsley ludus literarius: or the grammar schoole; shewing how to proceede from the first entrance into learning to the highest perfection at the internet archive. london 1612 **+** john locke a new method of making common-place-books at the internet archive. london 1706 - introduced a popular method for creating an index for commonplaces **+** obadiah walker of education: especially of young gentlemen at the internet archive. oxford 1673 **+** petrus mosellanus tabulae de schematibus et tropis.... in rhetroica philippi melanchthonis. in erasmi roterdami libellum de duplici copia. paris 1542 **+** philip melanchthon de locis communibus ratio. augsburg **+** philip melanchthon institutiones rhetoricae. wittenberg **+** philip melanchthon rhetorices elementa. lyon 1537 **+** rodolphus agricola de formando studio. antwerp 1532; composed 1484 // republic of bob