The Commonplace Book of William Byrd II of Westover (review)

Kevin Berland, Jan Kristen Gilliam, and Kenneth A. Lockridge define the purpose of The Commonplace Book of William Byrd II of Westover as a contribution to "a deeper understanding of Byrd's public and private life" (1). The edition achieves this goal and more. The editors argue that Byrd's public and private life can be understood only in terms of the larger world, a logical enough argument given that the commonplace book is where self and world meet. The self psychology discovers should be understood in terms of the culture history reveals. This approach to Byrd and to early American studies answers two questions that readers within the academy may bring to any such study: first, what is the merit of single-author studies at the present moment, especially in early American studies; and second, how should such studies be done in a time when new historicism and cultural studies define much of what literary scholars do? A third question—whether the focus on this single figure reproduces traditional assumptions about agency and history, in particular the role of elite white males as central—is answered as well, though more ambiguously.

The answers emerge through reading the entries in the commonplace book within both the particulars of Byrd's life and the tradition of the commonplace book. The self found in the entries is thus textualized as well as historicized. Only a historicized analysis will lead to that "deeper understanding" of Byrd. Historicizing seeks to mediate any gap between the private self for which the editors argue and the public world they describe. One happy consequence of historicizing is that a reader otherwise uninterested in Byrd will find reason to read this book for the knowledge it contains about the social and intellectual world(s) in which he lived.

Readers already interested in Byrd, colonial Virginia, or Anglophone culture in the eighteenth century will gain a better understanding of the man and of private and public realms in the first part of the eighteenth century. Reading the footnotes is a liberal education not only for scholarship directly relevant to Byrd but also for sources and criticism about the culture(s) of the world(s) in which he lived. Relevant and informative cultural and psychological contexts for Byrd are interwoven in the prologue. It contains 10 numbered chapters (86 pp.) and concludes with "The Commonplace Book of a Colonial Gentleman in Crisis: An Essay," written by Kenneth Lockridge (25 pp.). These are supplemented by a commentary (95 pp.) that follows Byrd's text. It discusses the sources for the entries in the commonplace book and the revisions Byrd made in them; additional information is provided for both "general readers and specialists" (210). The research and the knowledge in the commentary are themselves significant scholarly achievements. Byrd's text is sandwiched between these formidable, enlightening, and always interesting materials and arguments. It is an apparently relatively scanty 87 pages, especially since the entries were written by others, though selected and sometimes revised by Byrd himself and thus presumptively important to him.

The prologue blends Byrd's biography with discussions of the role of the commonplace book in education, the latter term understood both broadly and instrumentally. The biographical narrative is, as Lockridge's title suggests, the story of a man in the throes of "a midlife crisis . . . , one that encompassed not only sexuality and gentility but also power, old age and identity" (90). Dating the commonplace book is crucial to the argument for crisis. The editors persuasively argue it was most likely "assembled" (91) between 1721 and 1726. Byrd was then in England, having returned from Virginia because he feared "retribution" (10) from Governor Spots-wood. In England, he sought social acceptance and a wealthy bride, quests which failed. The editors argue that the commonplace book expresses the struggles with and rage...