A really interesting find! There is a video at the link below– you can see the notebooks at about 1:30. Three rare handwritten notebooks from the first Indigenous activist to campaign overseas have been given a permanent home in Canberra. Anthony Martin Fernando left Sydney in the 1890s and travelled throughout Europe, publicising the plight … Continue reading An Aboriginal Activist’s Notebooks
This unique item was a Christmas gift to me from one of the few people who knows I’m obsessed enough with notebooks to write this blog. Of course I was thrilled when I opened the wrapping paper and saw it: The notebook is about 4×6″, with what appears to be a hand-painted suede cover. … Continue reading Western Suede-covered Diary from 1949
I’d heard about this book called New York Diaries: 1609 to 2009 and thought it sounded fabulous: for each day of the year, it gives an excerpt from the diary of a notable New York resident or visitor, including people such as Albert Camus, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Theodore Roosevelt, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Mark Twain, … Continue reading New York Diaries
It’s time yet again to crowdsource some of the “help me find this notebook” pleas I get, as well as some other tidbits from the mailbag: Zachary wonders “is it wrong that I saw the movie Thor over the weekend and left realizing I really wanted to find out what type of notebook Natalie Portman’s … Continue reading Reader Questions
Paul, a former Addict of the Month, sent me a couple of interesting notebook stories: First, a link to some info about the Jesse Owens Exhibit at a library at Ohio State. From Paul:Â “In Thompson Library on the Ohio State campus, I saw the travel diary of Jesse Owens, for his 1936 trip to … Continue reading Notes from Paul: Jesse Owens’s Diary and 5 Free Notebooks
I wish this could have been me: I GOT a real thrill in December 1999 in the Reading Room of the Morgan Library in New York when the librarian, Sylvie Merian, brought me, after I had completed an application with a letter of reference and a photo ID, the first, oldest notebook of Isaac Newton. … Continue reading Isaac Newton’s Notebook
Catching up on some more reader correspondence! From Carol: You probably already know about this—the Voynich manuscript—but I was looking at some cool pictures on National Geographic and thinking about how, really, it’s just someone’s very beautiful notebook! And I’ve crossed the line into custom-made—this week Staples is making three wire-o-bound graph paper notebooks in a … Continue reading Dispatches from our Readers
I bought a cool book a few weeks ago and was planning to blog about it… but then I discovered that there was more to the story– an exhibition at the Morgan Library! Here is a partial list of the kinds of lists included in “Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations,†… Continue reading ‘Lists’ Exhibition at Morgan Library
A reader named Colin sent me photos of a fascinating notebook from his collection: I thought you might like to see a notebook that dates back to 1938 when my parents rented a flat in Sliema, Malta. The rent was £3.10.0 per month [£3.50 in modern money] and the ink has survived amazingly well over … Continue reading Colin’s 1938 Notebook
Paul, a former Notebook Addict of the Month, sent me these images of Jack Kerouac’s notebooks. I have to say that I read On the Road and it did NOT make me a Kerouac fan at all… but seeing his notebooks might just change my mind! Paul writes “The first picture is the front page … Continue reading Reader Week: Kerouac’s Notebooks
