In my post about Denbigh notebooks, I linked to a site that had a photo of a Denbigh notebook from the 1960s: Drew Family Diaries. These diaries are worth a post of their own! Roger Drew created a website to share this amazing collection of diaries kept by members of his family, starting with his … Continue reading The Drew Family Diaries
This is an antique notebook I found on eBay. These kinds of diaries seem to have been issued to soldiers during World War I & II, to encourage the recording of memories of the battles fought in, places seen, friendships made, etc. It also includes some handy French phrases. This notebook is completely blank– I … Continue reading World War I Soldier’s Diary
If there’s one thing I love more than a notebook, it’s a facsimile notebook! I have been building up a small collection of books that reproduce artists’ notebooks or sketchbooks and they are among my favorite art books to flip through for inspiration. I’ve already reviewed a few of them: Lynda Barry’s Syllabus (buy here) … Continue reading Franz Marc’s Sketchbook from the Battlefield
An amusing sketch from a World War I notebook: Helston Museum’s new World War One exhibition will throw light on the lives of women carrying out war work with the display of two rarely seen artefacts belonging to local women.As part of the new Women in the First World War exhibition, the Helston WWI Heritage … Continue reading World War I Sketch in a Notebook
A beautiful old notebook containing the recollections of Alfred Gougeon, a French stretcher-bearer in World War 1. It sounds like he kept daily notes during the war, and then returned to them in the 1960s to write more about his experiences, given the two sets of dates on the cover. His family kept 3 of … Continue reading Diary of a WWI Soldier
I recently noticed this story about Siegfried Sassoon’s notebooks being archived at Cambridge University. Sassoon was a poet who refused to return to fight after being wounded in World War I. (Read Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration for an interesting perspective on his story.) The archive contains, among other things “Sassoon’s journals [and]Â pocket notebooks compiled … Continue reading Siegfried Sassoon’s Notebooks
