Sometimes people find their way to my website by searching for a bygone notebook brand that has left few other traces online. Often they are looking to replace a long discontinued notebook, and I’m sorry not to be able to help. But sometimes I actually can provide answers!
I recently received a message from someone who found this site while looking for information on Marquette diaries. This reader inherited a 1953 Marquette diary that his great-grandfather used while working on nuclear submarines in New York state. He shared these wonderful photos:
This is such a wonderful piece of family history to have preserved, giving a glimpse of the great-grandfather’s daily life and his feelings about working and living apart from his family during that time.
The reader contacted me hoping to find a similar diary in which he could start his own journaling habit to follow in his ancestor’s footsteps. Fortunately, this was not too hard. The cover and format of the 1953 Marquette diary immediately reminded me of a type that is available today: At-A-Glance‘s (Weekly Appointment Book).
The layout is so similar to the 1953 Marquette diary, with the morning hours on the left, afternoon hours on the right, and “evening” at the bottom of each day. All that is missing in today’s version is the space for weather notes at the top of the page. Other than that, it is basically the same but with updated typefaces. I don’t know if brands other than Marquette used this particular page format. It may not have been unique enough for anyone to copyright. I suppose it’s possible that Marquette was bought by some corporate ancestor of At-A-Glace (which is now part of ACCO, a multi-national conglomerate also including brands such as Mead, DayRunner, Hilroy and others) but I can’t find any company histories online that back that up. (I was hoping that my copy of the book The Accidental Diarist: A History of the Daily Planner in America would have some images of similar planners, but it mostly focuses on the pre-20th century origins of keeping daily planners and diaries.)
The happy ending to this notebook story is that my correspondent has already ordered a 2021 At-A-Glance diary to begin his journaling habit. But let me know in the comments if you know of other defunct brands of diaries that were similar, or comparable planners available today.