“Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. Such books are essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. ‘Commonplace’ is a translation of the Latin term locus communis (from Greek tópos koinós) which means ‘a theme or argument of general application,’ such as a statement of proverbial wisdom.”
“In 1685 the English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke wrote a treatise in French on commonplace books, translated into English in 1706 as A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books, ‘in which techniques for entering proverbs, quotations, ideas, speeches were formulated.’ Locke gave specific advice on how to arrange material by subject and category, using such key topics as love, politics, or religion. Following the publication of his work, publishers often printed empty commonplace books with space for headings and indices to be filled in by their users. An example is ‘Bell’s Common-Place Book, Formed generally upon the Principles Recommended and Practised by Mr Locke’ which was published by John Bell almost a century after Locke’s treatise. A copy of this blank commonplace was used by Erasmus Darwin from 1776 to 1787, and it was later used by Charles Darwin who called it ‘the great book’ when composing his grandfather’s biography.”