3 - Miscellanies, Commonplace Books, and the Essay

Summary

While the connections between commonplace books, miscellanies, and essays have long been recognised, and the significance of the commonplace methodology for early essayists noted, we still lack a comprehensive account of the genres’ enmeshing. Drawing on the work of prominent early essayists (Michel de Montaigne, John Florio, William Cornwallis), as well as the collections of Joshua Baildon and Francis Osborne, this chapter fills that gap. It shows how the commonplace method helped to generate the early essay by providing essayists with their raw materials, and also demonstrates how commonplace books and miscellanies modelled the practices of notation, citation, and imitation that made the form possible. Early essays were made from citations, but they also transformed those citations. Thus, early essays were grounded in both the humanist imitative tradition, from which the culture of commonplacing emerged, and a longer tradition of miscellaneous writing, reaching back to late antiquity.