The Ohio State University

Bellingham’s Commonplace Book online

December 17th, 2008

The Rare Books & Manuscripts Library is pleased to announce the completion of an ambitious project to digitize the seventeenth-century manuscript commonplace book of Sir Henry Bellingham. The project is live at http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/bellingham/. This project was researched, designed, and created by Sarah Shippy, a graduate student in OSU’s Department of History. Essentially scrapbooks of useful knowledge, commonplace books were privately produced notebooks in which readers recorded valuable and practical extracts from books that they read. Bellingham’s commonplace book offers researchers a fascinating look into Sir Henry’s personal reading habits and sheds light on the wide variety of topics—including history, religion, law and government, literature, science, and domestic affairs—that were popular with readers during the mid-seventeenth century. In addition to including a full digital reproduction of the manuscript, the website also includes detailed background information on the manuscript itself, its historical context, and the life of Sir Henry Bellingham.

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