The small notebook, initialled on the first leaf TWG, contains 112 pages of notes with an alphabetical index. The extracts in the book cover a range of subjects and authors, including: Suffrage, The Reform Bill and The Church (Disraeli); Origin of Man (Judkin); Duty, Gypsey Children and Consumption (Dickens); Influence of Art, Love and Paris (Bulwer Lytton); War and Treaties (Washington Irving); Monarchy (Gibbon); Mary Woolstoncroft [as an author] (Godwin); Poetry not dead (Charlotte Brontë).
The final entry is by Thomas Waller Gissing and is entitled Nature: What is more wonderful, more awe inspiring than Nature? What is it, that makes man more aware of his own insignificance, than the contemplation of the mighty Universe? Nature! That vast problem, which the wisest of the human race have been unable to solve! What Pythagoras, Tycho Braghe, & Galileo, could not elucidate! What Newton, with all his wisdom, could not explain; & what Bacon, with all his philosophy, could not comprehend!...