Here’s a gorgeous little antique notebook that I recently added to my collection.

At over a century old, it is still in pretty good shape! The cover seems to be some kind of faux leather wrapped around cardboard, with the year stamped in gold. The pages have gilt edges, rather faded now. Another nice little detail is the green and yellow headbands. There is an elastic that has lost its stretchiness, and a loop for a small pencil. The notebook measures about 3 x 5″.

Inside the front cover are these gorgeous marbled endpapers. The colors are still so vibrant. The same endpapers repeat inside the back cover, where they are also used to form an expanding pocket. I like the red cloth gussets on the pocket– they complement the marbled paper nicely. The same red cloth was used to bind the page block to the covers, as you can see a sliver of it between the endpapers– this in itself is an unusual way to bind a notebook, as usually the same endpaper sheet goes across the whole inside cover spread.

The pages of the diary are all squared with a 4mm grid. I would not be surprised if the manufacturer just made lots of book blocks with this grid paper, and then either sold them that way with blank covers, or put on dated covers and stamped the pages inside with diary-specific layouts. The printed pages begin with a lovely Art Nouveau style front page and a list of all the saints’ days, then continue with calendar pages with 2 days per page. There are a couple of blank pages at each end, but otherwise, that’s it– a very straightforward and simple diary.

The person who owned this notebook seems to have used it mainly for recording finances, as there are entries on some days that seem to note money spent and received. The handwriting varies, sometimes a spidery small script in ink, and sometimes larger scrawls in pencil. The variety is so wide, I almost wonder if this diary was used by more than one person. I can’t decipher most of the writing, but the words “payer” (to pay) and “achete” (buy) and “donne” (give) repeat quite often. The word “hemoglobine” also appeared, which made me wonder if the owner was a doctor, but I didn’t notice any other medical terms. Amongst other things, I saw what seemed to be expenditures for coal and oil, sponges and a “foot brush” and a note about a professor of gymnastics.

There are several loose receipts folded into the notebook, which would also indicate that it was used to keep track of purchases. The receipts all seem to be for groceries, as far as I can tell. The addresses seem to indicate that the person lived in or near Champigny-sur-Marne or Joinville-le-Pont, a suburban area just outside Paris. I went there once myself via train, and the owner of this notebook may have taken the train sometimes too, as there is one page where the writing looks a bit shaky!

This format for diaries must have been quite common over a period of years, as I have another item in my collection of antique and vintage notebooks that is quite similar in many ways, but with some interesting differences: an 1898 Agenda Notebook from France.

I love finding little gems like this– so similar to today’s notebooks, and yet with so much more charm.