Grab your notebook and pencils and immerse yourself: learn why the humble notebook has been an essential tool for celebrated thinkers throughout history.

Join our Head of Collections, Isabelle Charmantier, as she walks you through the exhibition Naturalists' Notebooks that focuses on how naturalists recorded the world on paper from the 18th century to today.

With the arrival of paper manufacturing in medieval Europe, the practice of notetaking was enthusiastically embraced by literate individuals. Whether handmade or luxurious, notebooks became an extension of the notetaker's brain, used to take spontaneous notes, to doodle and draw, to copy and share recipes, to keep a diary, or to write and rewrite drafts before copying them afresh.

Notebooks also became central to the practice of natural history: helping naturalists to take notes from the works of previous naturalists, keeping field notes, drawing the natural world, and sharing their ideas with others.

The advent of printing did not spell the end for the notebook, but rather invested notetaking with a fresh impetus. Naturalists’ Notebooks looks at some of the notebooks kept at the Linnean Society, tracing the multiple uses of an unassuming yet essential tool in the history of knowledge making.

Concessions

Please buy the concession ticket if you are any of the below:

65 years of age, or over
Under 26 years of age
Currently in receipt of UK government benefit (including, but not limited to, Income Based Jobseeker's Allowance, Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Housing Benefit, and Universal Credit).
Currently in full-time education.

The Linnean Society is at:

Burlington House, Piccadilly,

London W1J 0BF

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Curator-Led Exhibition Tour | Naturalists' Notebooks