The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

by Roland Allen

Meanwhile, zoological, geological or ornithological observations became formal entries on loose foolscap sheets, where Darwin also described thousands of specimens and connected his observations, where possible, to the published literature. Between FitzRoy’s books and Darwin’s, the Beagle carried an up-to-date reference library, and in the field notebooks Darwin refers to the work of at least nineteen authors. As he worked his way through a field notebook, Darwin struck through its entries just as merchants struck through journaled transactions when copying them to a ledger. And if he hadn’t transferred a field notebook’s contents in full before he had to go ashore again, he would take a different one, so as not to risk losing what he already had. So the notebooks overlap, and the reader has to jump from one to another and back again to read the entries chronologically.