“Thus, contents of commonplace books became increasingly specific and personal rather than generally applicable” - Jillian Hess
This (Easter) Sunday afternoon, on the 4th April 2026 my office studio is transformed into a study.
And sandwiching a nap, I wrestle from my arm chair, to my daybed to my desk with Jillian M. Hess’s book. “HOW ROMANTICS AND VICTORIANS ORGANISED INFORMATION, Commonplace Books, Scrapbooks, and Albums.
As I read the history of the practice, it occurs to me that our human need or desire to organise information could only ever lead to the invention of something like the Large Language Models, that serve as a kind of collective commonplace book. And making general knowledge universally available to anyone with a browser window and the ability to type or speak a prompt.
This access and excess of general knowledge, makes specific and personal knowledge all the more valuable.
In the Commonplace section of this substack, I am collecting or ‘commonplacing’ this specific and personal knowledge.
This is the ‘dead stock’ that while valuable has yet to be transformed into a ‘saleable commodity’. Here’s the trade, I offer this commonplace to you freely, and your attention compels me to make the entries at least comprehensible.
This post will serve as the index for this section.
I’m aware that most indexes fail, still I will give it my best go.