How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information: Commonplace Books, Scrapbooks, and Albums

In nineteenth-century Britain, the commonplace book, scrapbook, and album were popular ways to collect and organize information. This book explores how technological and social changes shaped these practices, revealing the composition methods of well-known writers and their lesser-known contemporaries. It argues that the dominant epistemic frameworks of the period influenced the organization of knowledge and that commonplace books helped Romantics and Victorians organize people.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 04 August 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

In the nineteenth century, a common practice among literary households in Britain was to maintain a commonplace book, scrapbook, or album. Renowned figures such as Coleridge, Eliot, and Faraday all kept collections of quotations and notes, reflecting their interests and intellectual pursuits. However, despite the prevalence of these collections, the nineteenth-century commonplace book, along with related traditions like scrapbooks and albums, has received relatively limited scholarly attention.

This book aims to shed light on the evolution of information gathering, storage, and organization in nineteenth-century Britain. As the commonplace book transitioned from the schoolroom to the domestic sphere, it began to incorporate elements of friendship albums. At the same time, the proliferation of print technology enabled readers to easily cut and paste excerpts rather than painstakingly copying them by hand.

Based on a comprehensive examination of over 300 manuscripts, this volume explores the composition practices of well-known writers like Coleridge, Scott, Eliot, and Tennyson, as well as their lesser-known contemporaries. The book is divided into two sections, the first exploring how knowledge organization developed in alignment with the dominant epistemic frameworks of the period, while the second examines how commonplace books contributed to the organization of people during the Romantic and Victorian eras.

Chapters within the book focus on prominent organizational methods employed in nineteenth-century commonplacing, often associated with specific epistemic virtues. These include diaristic forms and the imagination (Chapter Two), real-time entries signaling objectivity (Chapter Three), antiquarian remnants serving as empirical evidence for historical arguments (Chapter Four), communally produced commonplace books that attest to socially constructed knowledge (Chapter Five), and more.

By examining the nineteenth-century commonplace book and its associated traditions, this book offers valuable insights into the changing methods of information gathering, storage, and organization in a period of profound technological and social transformation. It demonstrates how the commonplace book played a crucial role in shaping the intellectual and cultural landscape of nineteenth-century Britain, and how it continues to resonate in our contemporary understanding of the past.

Weight: 418g
Dimension: 135 x 203 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192896070