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Which of the three prepositions in the squared brackets in the sentence
In an old notebook, I found some notes [from|by|of] John
are correct, if the notes
i.e., if the only implication of the preposition should be, that John was the author of the notes?
Now the OP has clarified that these are notes written by John I convert here my earlier comment into an answer.
You can certainly say a symphony by Mozart, a novel by Dickens, a sculpture by Hepworth, a goal by Pele. Notes by John is OK.
However I must say that notes are usually quite unimportant documents and it seems rather pretentious to want to specify who wrote them in the same way as we do for more substantial works. It would seem even stranger to say a shopping list by John for instance. Perhaps for this reason notes by John although perfectly grammatical sounds slightly odd, at least to my ears.
