Melesinda’s Commonplace Book: Passion or Performance?

Literary passion transcends the boundaries of culture, geography, religion, class, and, evidently, age. The flexibility of this last classification is heavily underscored by a 1749 commonplace book titled A Collection of Various Kinds of Poetry by Melesinda Munbee. Nothing about the book seems particularly out of the ordinary: it is slightly smaller than average, with a red-and-gold pattern on its covers and about 160 tanned pages of poetic extracts from John Dryden, Sir John Suckling, and Alexander Pope in neat—albeit large—cursive writing. However, despite the book’s initial appearance of normalcy, it reveals itself to be an anomaly in the middle of its title page, where the words “Completed at the age of 5 years and 5 months” are written in large loopy letters. Could it be that over 150 pages worth of poetic extracts—a marker of true literary dedication—were written by a barely-school-aged child?

It is first necessary to understand who Melesinda Munbee was: her family, class, upbringing, and other factors that may have contributed to the creation and completion of her commonplace book. While few records of her life exist, the book itself gives two important details: first, on the title page, it dates the completion of the book to 1749, which, paired with the inscription of her age, sets her birth year to around 1744; and second, in the book’s dedication, Melesinda solely addresses “my honoured Father, Valentine Munbee,” providing a starting point for tracing her genealogy.

Valentine Munbee, born around 1696, was a wealthy man who owned significant land and slaves in St. Ann Parish, Jamaica. In the 1730s, he relocated to Suffolk, England, where he purchased land and built Horringer House. Around this time, he entered a long-term relationship with a woman named Elizabeth Warden, whom he would go on to have five children with: Elizabeth (b. 1735), Bellamira (b. 1737), Mary (b. 1738), Valentine (b. 1740), and Thomas (b. 1741). Munbee and Elizabeth Warden never married, which was highly unusual for the time. In his will, Munbee states his belief that “the essence of Matrimony consists in a union of minds and mutual fidelity and not in exterior ceremonies and public forms,” which would suggest his decision not to marry was a rejection of societal conventions. Interestingly, he also refers to Elizabeth Warden with the honorific “Mrs.” This could be an expression of his belief that their relationship was as sacred as a marriage; alternatively, it could indicate that she was legally married to another man. Munbee may have also been married at the time of their relationship, to a wealthy woman from Jamaica named Bridget Beckford. Reports of their relationship are inconsistent: some say they had a daughter in Jamaica in 1724, who died in infancy—after which Munbee decided to leave for England (presumably without Bridget); others suggest that Bellamira may have been Bridget’s child, rather than Elizabeth’s, suggesting that Munbee continued his relations with Bridget well after moving to England.

Melesinda remains an elusive figure in this picture. Her birth around 1744 would make her the youngest of Munbee’s children. She is not mentioned in his 1750 will, in reference to his children with Elizabeth Warden or elsewhere, which likely indicates that she was a child from another relationship. One of the few public records of her existence identifies Bridget as her mother; this would further support the possibility that Munbee continued his relations with Bridget while living in England with Elizabeth Warden. Despite Bunbee’s omission of Melesinda in his will, he did seem to be present in her life: she begins the dedication A Collection of Various Kinds of Poetry by addressing Munbee as “you who first inform’d my infant age.” This detail indicates that, despite being the child of another relationship, she was likely raised alongside Bunbee’s children with Elizabeth Warden at Horringer House.

With all of this background on Melesinda and her family, one can start to imagine how her life may have looked. She was likely educated by a tutor or governess, as was the custom for children of wealthy English families. For girls, this education was centered around art and culture, which could explain why Melesinda was versed in poetry at such an early age. She also had many older siblings, one of whom could have significantly assisted her in the completion of her commonplace book; this would most likely have been her sister Elizabeth, who was nearly ten years her senior and had already completed a poetry collection of her own.

As previously mentioned, the dedication of A Collection of Various Kinds of Poetry is solely addressed to Melesinda’s father, Valentine Munbee, suggesting that he is her primary audience. At the end of the dedication, she describes her upbringing under her father’s care as “Exciting Gratitude, as well as duty: both which, I hope to pay, as highly duet.” All of this frames Melesinda’s compilation as a means of presenting personal progress and creativity to her father, who took it upon himself to see that she grew up cultured. There is, of course, more complexity to this narrative: as a socially illegitimate* child, Melesinda may have been treated as the outsider of the family—and possibly even as inferior to her siblings. With this in mind, her book begins to seem like something much more dismal: a young girl’s attempt at proving to her father that she is worthy of his affection.

The idea that Melesinda might have been trying to prove her worth to her father is supported by a section in 

*All of Melesinda’s siblings were technically illegitimate, since Elizabeth Walder and Munbee never legally married; but the couple’s claim of spiritual marriage gave the children a sense of social and familial legitimacy that Melesinda lacked.

the compilation titled “Riddles.” This section includes five classic riddles, such as “What is that, which hath been tomorrow, / And will be yesterday?” and “One Father had twelve Sons, these each a Race / Of thirty Daughters then a double face. Their looks are black & white successively; / They all immoral are, & yet all dye.”* In the 18th and 19th centuries, the creation and knowledge of riddles was a common show of cleverness for young girls and women. Jane Austen herself acknowledges this concept in the ninth chapter of her 1815 novel Emma, where she describes Emma Woodhouse exercising her self-perceived cleverness by crafting riddles alongside Harriet Smith.

The more general practice of keeping commonplace books, regardless of its contents, was seen as a means for girls and young women to demonstrate their sophistication. In her 2021 essay “Domestic Extracts,” Mai-Lin Cheng describes commonplace books as “an example of writing by a highly literate reader who nonetheless had no pretensions of publishing herself.” This served as the perfect outlet for 18th- and 19th-century women to show off their intelligence without transgressing the domesticity expected of them. Furthermore, the pages of Melesinda’s book feature several small drawings, neatly depicting various shapes and floral designs. Amateur drawing was yet another pursuit considered appropriate and becoming for a young lady, due to its similar ability to capture skill without breaking the domestic bubble. Altogether, a commonplace book full of poems, riddles, and simple drawings, intended only for immediate family, was the perfect way for a girl like Melesinda to prove her worth in the 18th century world.

Despite Melesinda’s practical incentives, could her commonplace book still have been an authentic example of literary passion? Unfortunately, this seems like an unlikely prospect, given that the book features topics a five-year-old could never truly understand. A poignant example of this is the poem “A Ballad upon a Wedding” by Sir John Suckling, which is recorded towards the end of Melesinda’s book. The poem describes the materialism of marital rituals, which she would have had no experience with—especially given that her father was not in a traditional marriage himself. The poem proves even less suitable for a Melesinda in its final stanza, which includes the highly sensual lines “At length the candle's out, and now / All that they had not done they do; / What that is, who can tell?” The inclusion of such content—which is found throughout Melesinda’s book—suggests that she had no genuine understanding or appreciation of the poetry she extracted, but was instead blindly copying down various poems she stumbled upon. She could therefore be considered a purely “performative” literary fan. This is not to say 

*The answers are “today” and “a year,” respectively.

that commonplace books or literary fan culture were, as a whole, inauthentic. At another point in “Domestic Extracts,” Cheng establishes that commonplace books were originally intended to capture the genuine imagination and experiences of their curators. However, many young girls in Melesinda’s time, especially from the upper class, may have been drawn to such activities for the sake of appearance.

Out of Jane Austen’s characters, Emma Woodhouse would probably be the most accurate portrayal of a young literary fan in the 18th- and early 19th-century. While she believes she is driven solely by passion, there are also performative and aesthetic motives behind her pursuits. This is not unique to literary culture, nor Austen’s era: in fact, the aspect of performance is present in nearly all modern-day fandoms, including those of musical artists, TV shows, and even foods. Of course, Melesinda Munbee was an extreme example of this. The vast majority of fans, in all areas, have some level of passion, even if there is a bit of insincerity sprinkled in.

Work Cited

Austen, Jane. Emma. Edinburgh, Pearson Education, 23 Dec. 1815.

Cheng, Mai-Lin. “Domestic Extracts.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 60, no. 4, 1 Jan. 2021, pp. 467–485, https://doi.org/10.1353/srm.2021.0028. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

“Melisinda Munbee - Ancestry®.” Ancestry.com, 2021, www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/melisinda-munbee-24-zyj6rw. Accessed 31 Mar. 2026. 

Munbee, Melesinda. A Collection of Various Kinds of Poetry. 1749.

Cheng, Mai-Lin. “Domestic Extracts.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 60, no. 4, 1 Jan. 2021, pp. 467–485, https://doi.org/10.1353/srm.2021.0028. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

“Valentine Munbee (1696-1750) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree.” Wikitree.com, 8 Oct. 2023, www.wikitree.com/wiki/Munbee-2#_note-4. Accessed 31 Mar. 2026.