Item 48 - Notebook and journal of Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

1 volume (26 x 21 cm), containing 156 original leaves and 4 flyleaves (2 at the front and 2 at the back) added when the book was conserved, a printed sheet pasted to f. 55v, and a number of papers (6 single sheets, 2 folded sheets, 1 card, and 1 slip) inserted loose. Folios 1–155 are ruled, and there are stubs after ff. 36 and 145. Quarter-bound in red leather and dark blue cloth.

According to the accessions register this book was presented to the Library in December 1958 by E. J. Elliot, and on the front pastedown has been written in pencil, probably at the time it was received, ‘Presented by E. J. Elliott [sic] Esq. Matr. 1902’. The donor, Edward James Elliot, was a Trinity contemporary and friend of Eddington who became a civil servant at the Board of Trade. Elliot was bracketed 19th Wrangler in Part I of the Mathematical Tripos in 1904, when Eddington was Senior Wrangler, and Elliot and Eddington were the founding members, with C. J. A. Trimble, of an informal reading group at Trinity known as the ‘E. J. Elliot Literary Society’ (see p. 36 of this volume). This sufficiently explains Elliot’s interest in Eddington, but it is unclear how he obtained the book, which was clearly in Eddington’s own possession up to the year of his death. On the front of the volume is pasted a piece of paper labelled, ‘Eddington’s own writing. (diary)’. This was evidently added sometime between Eddington’s death and the presentation of the volume to Trinity, but it is unclear whether it was written by Elliot or someone else. Passages of the journal section have been marked up in pencil, apparently for printing, but again it is unclear by whom. Some of the pencil additions were evidently posthumous, as they include a reference to the work Fundamental Theory, published in 1946 (f. 150r).

The book contains various autobiographical lists and a journal, of varying detail, describing Eddington’s activities in the years from 1905 to 1914. The first inscriptions in it were evidently made in 1905, though it includes some information from earlier years. See the separate descriptions of the individual inscriptions and inserted material.