Material intersections: Image and text in the eighteenth-century commonplace

The commonplace book has long provided readers-turned-writers space for textual reflection. In A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books, John Locke asserts a defined schema for the creation of this intentionally usable and personal genre, one more organic than journaling, more deliberate than note-taking. Despite renewed interest in literary ephemera of this sort, the commonplace book collectively remains on the periphery of literary studies, perhaps because the volumes found in today’s libraries reflect such varied experiences. However, it is precisely this variation that reveals insight to the readerly patterns and expectations of the time. Ranging from decorative flourishes and echoes of printers’ marks to richly scrolled title pages and evocative vignettes, the materiality of the commonplace book offered in these moments signals a heightened concern by readers to consider the visual potential of the text as part of their reading experience. This analysis looks at scattered remnants of eighteenth-century commonplace books for compelling examples of image and text relationships that reflect illustrative models from the print market.