It’s been more than 8 years since I reviewed a notebook from Letts! This classic English brand has been around even longer than that, though… since 1812, in fact! Letts claims to be the first publisher of “commercial diaries,” meaning a mass-produced calendar book combined with space to write and usually some business-related promotional info and/or helpful facts. The company has since merged with another classic English brand, Filofax, and is now part of a large corporation that owns the Blueline and Rediform stationery and office product brands as well.
Their products have evolved over the years, but still have a classic feel. The samples the company sent me to review harken back to their early days with designs that feel timeless. “Lett’s” take a look!
Letts Origins Notebook
I’ll focus on one of the A5 size journals first. This is the “note” version, which on Letts’ website is referred to as the “Origins Book“. It is simple and straightforward, with an understated leather-look cover in a lovely shade of blue. The brand name is in a prominent position on the front cover, back cover and spine, but the debossing is subtle and classy. The hardcover, rounded corner construction seems sturdy. There is no elastic closure. The notebook ships with branding info on a sticker on the front cover, and a barcode sticker on the back. They remove easily, but the rear barcode sticker pulled off a little of the dye from the leather– the light spots aren’t terribly noticeable, but I was very glad the front cover sticker didn’t do the same thing!
Inside, the off-white endpapers have a similar leather-like texture, and are printed with a brief history of the company. There is a pocket in the back but it’s just a rounded corner pocket with no expanding sides. This makes it easy to tuck things in, but limits how much will fit. There is a ribbon marker.
The space for writing your contact details is on the first inside page, at the beginning of the index pages. These are followed by 235 numbered pages. I love how they have used the red double line at the top of the page and blue lines below. I’ve seen quite a few old notebooks that use that design, and it looks much more elegant than today’s notebooks that mostly have just plain grey lines.
The paper is 90 GSM, and feels quite smooth. Fountain pens work great with no feathering or bleed-through (though I realized in the midst of testing that it was time to refill a lot of my fountain pens!) Only the usual super-soaker pens bled through, and showthrough was about average.
Overall, this is a very satisfying choice if you want a fountain pen friendly notebook with lined pages and a classic feel. The list price is $23.99. Other colors are available but unfortunately not a pocket size or other page styles such as dot grid or plain. It would be fun to have a page layout that keeps the double red line at the top, and perhaps one blue line and the page number at the bottom, but is unlined in between. With the 90 GSM paper, that would make a great art journal!
Letts Icon Travel Journal
The other A5 notebook is the Icon Book Travel Journal, which retails for $16.99. The cover is a nice retro shade of green, but it is a smooth paper-wrapped hard cover without the leather texture. A debossed line around the outside edges dresses it up a bit, and the logos are stamped in gold. The inside is very similar to the previous notebook, but the main section of pages is formatted with a space at the top for date and location so you can record details about trips. I have seen travel journals from the 1950s in this exact format.
There are a few index pages at the beginning, and in the back, a section to record other travel info. There are a couple pages for a yearly planner, then highlights of hotel, restaurant and travel info for major cities around the world, a few pages of time zone and conversion charts, and pages to record expenses, dates to remember, favorite restaurants and people you’ve met, and general notes.
I’ve had so many diaries over the years that had these kinds of info pages. As a kid, I found them rather interesting and enjoyed knowing trivia about the population of cities or telephone dialing codes, even if I had no actual need for such facts. The Letts travel journal includes a few things such as zodiac and anniversary gift info that don’t really relate to travel per se, as opposed to handy things like an international clothing size conversion chart. The hotel information will not be useful to all travelers, as it is limited to a few of the best known and most expensive hotels in each city. (But I can actually say I’ve stayed at one of the ones listed– it was the Royal York in Toronto, which was, surprisingly, affordable enough for a business traveler, if only in the middle of January when no one wants to go to Toronto! The journal does include a Fahrenheit/Celsius temperature conversion chart, which would have helped me know how cold “really f***ing cold” is!)
Letts Origins Slim Pocket Travel Journal and Letts Legacy Slim Pocket Notebook
The other two samples I received are pocket size notebooks, again one just a regular lined notebook and the other a travel journal. These are in a slim format, approximately 3.5 x 6″. This width includes a pen slot along the spine of the notebook, another detail that I’ve seen in notebooks dating back to the 1800s. Those antique notebooks usually had a small pencil in the slot, but the Letts diaries include an elegant gold metallic ballpoint pen with a flat top that makes it easy to pull out. The pen slot tucks under easily when you open the notebook, so it doesn’t interfere with it opening completely flat. The pen feels very long and skinny when you write with it, but the shape is dictated by fitting into the notebook. I’m not sure what kind of refills might work other than the ones Letts sells, but what’s in there works fine. It seems like a pretty basic medium ballpoint, but I’m so accustomed to using very fine gel ink pens that I don’t have much basis to judge a ballpoint these days!
The faux-leather textures and exterior colors of these pocket size samples are different from the larger ones I received, and the pocket notebook also features gilt page edges, but otherwise the page formats inside are basically the same as the larger notebooks. The paper is only 45GSM in the notebook and 70 GSM in the travel journal, though, so they will not be as fountain pen friendly. (I didn’t do full tests on the small notebooks but made a small mark with a fountain pen that showed significant bleed-through.)
The pocket size travel journal is their “Origins Slim Travel Journal,” which is available in other colors and retails for $21.99. The pocket notebook is the “Legacy Slim Pocket Notebook,” also available in other colors, at $24.99.
I’ve probably used the word “classic” too much in this post, but these Letts notebooks are just that. Their collection names Legacy, Origins, and Icon show what they were aiming at, and they have succeeded in making these current products feel like part of the brand’s long history. They have also kept them relatively affordable, especially for a product that is made in Great Britain. They don’t feel as upscale as a real leather Smythson notebook (which would cost about 3X more), but Letts’ faux-leather is more realistic than most, and they offer a great value with features that distinguish them from many others on the market. If there’s anything more I’d ask for it would be that they add a 9x14cm version of the Origins notebook with unlined pages just to suit my own personal preferences!
A wide variety of Letts diaries, notebooks and journals are available at Amazon and other retailers, and of course directly from Letts. Amazon doesn’t seem to stock all the products I reviewed, but they do have the ones below, though prices and color availability may vary:
Origins Notebook Navy Blue (or in black)
You can also take a chance on winning one of these samples! I will be giving away the two small notebooks and the green travel journal, 1 notebook each to 3 lucky winners selected from all eligible entries. To enter:
On Twitter, tweet something containing “Letts Notebook @NotebookStories @LettsDiariesâ€, and follow @NotebookStories and @Lettsoflondon
On Facebook, “like†the Notebook Stories page and the Letts of London page, and post something containing the words “Letts Notebooks†on the Notebook Stories page.
On Instagram, follow @Notebook.Stories and @lettsoflondon and comment on my Letts giveaway post, tagging a friend and adding a hashtag of your favorite adjective describing the Letts notebook or travel journal. (Example: “@myfriendsally #retrodesignâ€)
On your blog, post something containing the words “Letts Notebooks†and “Notebook Stories†and link back to this post, also leaving a comment below with the link in case the trackback doesn’t work.
Please note that the prize can only be shipped to a US address. The deadline for entry is Friday December 6, 2019 at 11:59PM, EST. Please allow a couple of weeks for me to announce a winner. Good luck everyone!
Thank you for this review! Complete Anglophile here, so I will be adding the classic A5 to my collection.