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unusual facts about Commonplace book



Francis Meres

Meres is especially well known for his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598), a commonplace book that is important as a source on the Elizabethan poets, and more particularly because it is the first critical account of the poems and early plays of William Shakespeare.

Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai

Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai was well-acquainted with the classics and he kept a Zibaldone into which he copied his translations of passages from Greek and Latin authors such as Aristotle, Boethius and Seneca the Younger.

James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby

Lord Derby left in MS. A Discourse concerning the Government of the Isle of Man (printed in the Stanley Papers and in Francis Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. ii.) and several volumes of historical collections, observations, devotions (Stanley Papers) and a commonplace book.

The Brome play of Abraham and Isaac

The text of the play was lost until the 19th century, when a manuscript was found in a commonplace book dating from around 1470–80 at Brome Manor, Suffolk, England.

The Majesty of Colors

Weir claims to have been inspired by a TIGSource competition themed around H. P. Lovecraft's commonplace book.


see also

François Xavier d'Entrecolles

Josiah Wedgwood, the famous English porcelain manufacturer, is known to have copied extracts of d'Entrecolles' work in his Commonplace Book.

Journal of a Sad Hermaphrodite

The Journal is perhaps influenced by Cyril Connolly's The Unquiet Grave in this respect, although it modifies Connolly's use of the "commonplace book" technique - itself perhaps borrowed by Connolly from George Gissing's The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft - to produce a more traditional narrative.