The Appeal of Writing by Hand in a Notebook
On a recent trip to the library, I picked up The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, by Roland Allen, and I’m looking forward to reading it. I enjoyed my friend Rohan Maitzen’s review. Allen’s main point, she says, “is that this everyday item, which we now take for granted in its multiplicity of forms and uses, really was revolutionary, changing not just the way we make notes but the way we think.”
Allen writes that a notebook “challenges us to create, to explore, to record, to analyse, to think. It lets us draw, compose, organize and remember—even to care for the sick. With it, we can come to know ourselves better, appreciate the good, put the bad in perspective, and live fuller lives.”
The simplicity of the notebook is part of what makes it “endlessly appealing,” Rohan says in her review, “even in this electronic era.” When I’m writing by hand, I often take notes on scraps of paper instead of in a notebook, but all the same, I find it hard to resist a beautiful blank notebook and have filled many of them over the years.
I was tempted to buy all three of these lovely blank books (above) at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire, when I was there last Thursday. I chose only one, pictured at the beginning of this post, which features a reproduction of a wallpaper pattern used in an upstairs bedroom in the House.
I just got home after a wonderful week in England, and I’ll share some of my photos from the trip once I’ve had a chance to sort through them. For now, here are some Chawton daffodils for you:
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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:
Government House and St. Paul’s Church, Halifax
“The year to appreciate Austen” (John Mullan’s guide on where to start with Jane Austen)
Read more about my books, including St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade, Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues, and Jane Austen and the North Atlantic, here.
Copyright Sarah Emsley 2025 ~ All rights reserved. No AI training: material on http://www.sarahemsley.com may not be used to “train” generative AI technologies.
