Partly autograph commonplace book compiled by Milton, comprising a series of notes, extracts and quotations, in Latin and English, drawn from about 110 works by some 92 authors, arranged under a series of headings and classified in three main sections (according to the subjects of ethics, economics and politics) and also including many notes on marriage and divorce; the volume originally comprising 126 folio leaves, paginated 1-250 (including 136 blanks), and an unnumbered table, but now lacking (blank) pages 33-6, 83-93, 207-8, 225-8, 231-4, as well as the lower halves of pp. 1-14, which have been excised; 71 pages containing entries in Milton's own hand; the remained in the hands of five or six amanuenses, including Edward Phllips (on p. 197), Jeremie Picard (on pp. 188, 195), the scribe responsible for Book I of Paradise Lost (MnJ 22) (on p. 249), and (on pp. 71, 77, 187 and 242) the amanuensis who transcribed an Italian sonnet in Milton's exemplum of Della Casa's Rime (see Introduction above, Milton's Library, No. iv); a few later entries made by Richard Graham, first Viscount Preston (1648-95); repaired and rebound in the late 19th century.
Complete text edited by Alfred J. Horwood, with unfolding facsimile examples, in A Common-Place Book of John Milton and a Latin Essay and Latin Verses presumed to be by Milton, Camden Society NS. 16 (1876) [reissued with corrections]; by J. H. Hanford and N. G. McCrea in Columbia, XVIII (1938), 128-220; by Ruth Mohl in an English translation in Yale, I (1953), pp. 344-513 (with a facsimile example p. 361); and extensively discussed, with facsimile examples, in Ruth Mohl, John Milton and His Commonplace Book (New York, 1969). Complete collotype facsimile in A Common-place Book Of John Milton, ed. A.J. Horwood (privately printed, 1876). Other facsimile examples in Garnett & Gosse (1903), III, after p. 16; John Milton 1608-1674 Facsimiles of Autographs and Documents in the British Museum (London, 1908); Greg, English Literary Autographs, Plate LIII; Helen Darbishire, The Chronology of Milton's Handwriting, The Library, 4th Ser. 14 (1933), 229-35; Maurice Kelley, Milton and Machiavelli's Discorsi, SB, 4 (1951-2), 123-7 (Plates I, III); Don M. Wolfe, Milton and His England (Princeton, 1971), p. 22; Hilton Kelliher and Sally Brown, English Literary Manuscripts (London, 1986), No. 17, p. 29; and in Chris Fletcher et al., 1000 Years of English Literature: A Treasury of Literary Manuscripts (British Library, 2003), p. 69. Also discussed in LR, I, 275-6 and II, 4-5; James Holly Hanford, The Chronology of Milton's Private Studies, PMLA, 36 (1921), 251-314; Maurice Kelley, Milton's Commonplace Book, Folio 20, MLN, 62 (1947), 192-4; Kelley, Daniel Skinner, Lord Preston, and Milton's Commonplace Book, MLN, 64 (1949), 522-5; and William Riley Parker [and John T. Shawcross], Milton's Commonplace Book: An Index and Notes, Milton Newsletter, 3 (1969), 41-54. See also MnJ 7-8, MnJ 10, MnJ 50.
First published in London, 1671. Columbia, I, Part 2, 330-99. Darbishire, II, 59-109. Carey & Fowler, pp. 330-402.