JOHN SERVICE
Author
I started a commonplace book in 1977 when I went to work in Brazil, where the British Council had a Cultura Ingles. Far from solely immersing myself in Portugese culture I also spent lunch times in this British library filled with English literature. What inspired me to start writing my own commonplace book was coming across Viscount Samuel's Book of Quotations Second Edition, James Barrie, 1954 (First Edition, The Cresset Press, 1947)
In the introduction to which he wrote as follows:
"If you have not had the practice of keeping a quotation book of your own, here is mine at your service. Or even if you have, you may be interested to compare this with yours. One difference there will almost certainly be: it is most unlikely that your collection will have been sixty-four years in the making."
I've been aiming to emulate his efforts ever since, whether I manage 64 years is as yet unknown!
EXPERIENCE
"Of the making of many books there is no end" as the Book of Ecclesiastes puts it. With previous careers in publishing, printing and the paper industry John Service is currently employed by the Prayer Book Society, dedicated to the promotion of the use of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This work has informed the compiler of Johnson's Commonplace Book's outlook and his choices of passages for inclusion in it.
What is a commonplace book?
Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: notes, proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes.
Entries are most often organised under systematic subject headings and differ functionally from journals or diaries, which are chronological and introspective.