Raw capture — raw/choice-notes-from-notes-and-queries.md
url: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/choice-notes-from-notes-and-queries/ title: "Choice Notes from Notes and Queries (1858)" author: Ross MacFarlane (text); William Thoms (ed., original volume) date_fetched: 2026-07-18 date_published: 2026-07-07 source: The Public Domain Review
Website: The Public Domain Review Collection: Books Text by: Ross MacFarlane Source volume: Choice Notes from "Notes and Queries": History, ed. William Thoms (London: Bell and Daldy, 1858) Digital source: Internet Archive / University of Toronto Libraries Rights: PD Worldwide (underlying work); No Additional Rights (digital copy)
MacFarlane opens by invoking George Eliot's Middlemarch and the character Edward Casaubon — a pedantic clergyman unable to complete his intended work "The Key to All Mythologies." He suggests that had the novel been set later, Casaubon "might have found the perfect outlet in Notes & Queries."
The periodical was "founded in 1849 by William Thoms, a clerk in the House of Lords." It gave amateur scholars a venue to "share antiquarian finds and sources ('notes') or raise questions arising from them ('queries')." These often sparked ongoing discussions across subsequent issues.
MacFarlane notes the journal found its niche in Victorian Britain's crowded publishing world, capitalizing on a "rising antiquarian interest in the British Isles that had begun in the seventeenth century." Amateur researchers, motivated by fears that industrialization and rural depopulation would sever connections to the past, formed local and national societies.
In 1858, Choice Notes from Notes and Queries appeared as a standalone "selection of the more curious articles." This volume focused on "History" and was meant to launch a series, though only one more volume materialized — on "Folk-Lore," a term Thoms himself had coined.
Thoms stated in his introduction that the volume aimed to "correcting factual errors that had crept into the historical record" while entertaining readers in "low spirits" or "waiting for company." From a modern vantage, MacFarlane writes, the book also reveals "our Victorian forebears' attitudes to the past" and their fascination with Britain's elite.
British Monarchs and the Macabre
In an era when a "Great Men of History" school was emerging, Choice Notes concentrated on British royal peculiarities — from pedantic disputes over when reigns actually began to morbid death details. The volume includes:
Oliver Cromwell — Most-Featured Figure
Despite the monarchical focus, "the historical personage who features most in Choice Notes on History is Oliver Cromwell," reflecting the strong feelings he still provoked. Topics include:
MacFarlane characterizes Choice Notes — and by extension Notes & Queries — as "highly representative of the popular approach to history in Britain in the nineteenth century," with its mix of alleged testimony, uncritical manuscript use, and sometimes dubious claims.
By the 1900s, the antiquarian tradition "appeared unscientific to a new generation of historians." Yet the journal persists today "in a slightly amended form." Scholar Patrick Leary has observed that its collaborative model anticipated large multi-author projects like the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
MacFarlane notes contemporary commentators have compared Notes & Queries to online spaces — a "crowd-sourced, virtual community of anonymous writers" resembling internet message boards, social media, and Reddit. The ethos is evident in Wikipedia, given contributors' "fascination with facts and clarifications." He closes by suggesting that among Wikipedia's anonymous editors may be "some latter-day Edward Casaubons, eschewing the writing of their masterpieces and finding a more practical home for their acquired knowledge."