Famous diaries
Diaries that outlived their authors
Guides to people who wrote for themselves: why they kept a diary, how they wrote it, and short dated excerpts from the editions that are out of copyright. Our own words; the diaries themselves are for you to read in full.
The Diary Written in Hiding
How a birthday present became the best-known diary of the twentieth century: Anne Frank’s years in the Secret Annex and why she began to rewrite her own diary.
Read →Charles DarwinThe Beagle Diary
On the five-year voyage of HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin kept a personal diary next to his scientific notes. It became the basis of his first book.
Read →Henry David ThoreauA Laboratory for Attention
The journal is not Walden: it records weather, factories and questions left open. How to read it, with short dated excerpts from the printed volumes.
4 periodsRead →John EvelynA Life Written in Retrospect
John Evelyn covered nearly seventy years in one diary, much of it written from memory. How to read it, with short dated excerpts from the edition.
4 periodsRead →John WoolmanConscience and Commerce
A Quaker who measured each day against the cost it put on other people. How to read his journal, with short dated excerpts from the edition.
4 periodsRead →Leo TolstoySixty Years of Diaries
Leo Tolstoy kept a diary from the age of eighteen until his death — rules for himself, confessions, and in the last year a diary he hid from his own family.
Read →Marie BashkirtseffThe Diary of a Young Artist
Marie Bashkirtseff wrote a diary in French from her early teens to her death at twenty-five. Published in 1887, it inspired a generation of women diarists.
Read →Robert Falcon ScottThe Last Entries
Robert Falcon Scott kept his journal to the end on the return from the South Pole in 1912. Found months later, it told the world what had happened.
Read →Samuel PepysNine Years in Shorthand
How Samuel Pepys kept a private diary in shorthand from 1660 to 1669, how he wrote it, and short dated excerpts from the public-domain edition.
4 periodsRead →