Can You Identify the Author of this Commonplace Book?

By Minnesotastan in Book & Lit on Sep 23, 2009 at 3:52 pm

Artists use sketchbooks to store ideas for future use. Bloggers have folders of bookmarks. And some authors keep notebooks or “commonplace” books.

One well-known author recorded “ideas, images, & quotations hastily jotted down for possible future use… for the most part they are merely suggestions or random impressions designed to set the memory or imagination working. Their sources are various—dreams, things read, casual incidents, idle conceptions, & so on…”

In order to keep his/her identity secret for the few moments it will take you to peruse this post, we’ll use for a photo the family grouping at left without saying which one he/she is.

In 1934 the author presented the notebook to an R.H. Barlow “in exchange for an admirably neat typed copy from his skilled hand.” Several hundred selections from this commonplace book have been assembled at La Petite Claudine. I’ve winnowed the list down to just a dozen. Aficionados will recognize the writer immediately and can access the rest of the material at the link.

8 Hor. Sto. – Man makes appt. with old enemy. Dies—body keeps appt.

31 Prehistoric man preserved in Siberian ice. (See Winchell—Walks and Talks in the Geological field—p. 156 et seq.)

34 Moving away from earth more swiftly than light—past gradually unfolded—horrible revelation.

76 Ancient cathedral—hideous gargoyle—man seeks to rob—found dead—gargoyle’s jaw bloody.

88 Lonely philosopher fond of cat. Hypnotises it—as it were—by repeatedly talking to it and looking at it. After his death the cat evinces signs of possessing his personality. N.B. He has trained cat, and leaves it to a friend, with instructions as to fitting a pen to its right fore paw by means of a harness. Later writes with deceased’s own handwriting.

106 A thing that sat on a sleeper’s chest. Gone in morning, but something left behind.

112 Man lives near graveyard—how does he live? Eats no food.

131 Phosphorescence of decaying wood—called in New England “fox-fire”.

142 Members of witch-cult were buried face downward. Man investigates ancestor in family tomb and finds disquieting condition.

182 In ancient buried city a man finds a mouldering prehistoric document in English and in his own handwriting, telling an incredible tale. Voyage from present into past implied. Possible actualisation of this.

190 Primal mummy in museum—awakes and changes place with visitor.

217 Ancient (Roman? prehistoric?) stone bridge washed away by a (sudden and curious?) storm. Something liberated which had been sealed up in the masonry of years ago. Things happen.

Link. Photo via Chepachit.com.