Monsieur Notebook (Fountain Pen Edition)

Monsieur notebooks have been promoted as a better quality alternative to Moleskine. They’re made with leather covers and come in a wide range of styles. This is the fountain pen version.

The marks on the cover are from a rather ill advised attempt to use an eye-dropper without sealing it properly

A little feathering with the old turquoise here

The paper is good: much better than Moleskine, that’s for sure. Not as good as Rhodia though. There is some feathering with wet nibs. If you look through some of my ink reviews, most of which were done in this notebook, you can see some evidence of this. The paper’s fountain pen friendly enough for a usual kind of notebook but it’s a little disappointing in a notebook designed specifically for fountain pens. I like that the paper is white rather than cream, however.

When I first received this notebook I opened it and tried to open it flat. It creaked and groaned and I thought I’d wrecked it. It turns out, though, that it was the leather cover making all the noise, not the binding, and in time it all starts to behave itself. The notebook still doesn’t lie entirely flat but it’s pretty much there and I’m sure that if I put some time into breaking it in it would be absolutely fine. In fact Monsieur says as much on its site.

I would like to see slightly better paper and it would be good to have some options other than just plain. It won’t beat out the Rhodia Webnotebook for me but it’s not too far away. It does look fantastic. Can’t beat real leather.

I received this notebook from Monsieur Notebooks at no cost. These are my honest opinions, nevertheless.