Diaries keep secrets, harbouring our fantasies and fictional histories. They are substitute boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses and friends. But in this age of social media, the role of the diary as a private confidante has been replaced by a culture of public self-disclosure. The Private Life of the Diary: from Pepys to Tweets is an elegantly-told story of the evolution – and perhaps death – of the diary. It traces its origins to seventeenth-century naval administrator, Samuel Pepys, and continues to twentieth-century diarist Virginia Woolf, who recorded everything from her personal confessions about her irritation with her servants to her memories of Armistice Day and the solar eclipse of 1927. Sally Bayley explores how diaries can sometimes record our lives as we live them, but that we often indulge our fondness for self-dramatization, like the teenaged Sylvia Plath who proclaimed herself 'The Girl Who Would be God'. This book is an examination of the importance of writing and self-reflection as a means of forging identity. It mourns the loss of the diary as an acutely private form of writing. And it champions it as a conduit to self-discovery, allowing us to ask ourselves the question: Who or What am I in relation to the world?
When the married Isabella Robinson was introduced to the dashing Edward Lane at a party in 1850, she was utterly enchanted. He was 'fascinating', she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man's charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, and she was to find it hard to shake...In one of the most notorious divorce cases of the nineteenth century, Isabella Robinson's scandalous secrets were exposed to the world. Kate Summerscale brings vividly to life a frustrated Victorian wife's longing for passion and learning, companionship and love, in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality.
Luann Budd offers to help you get started journaling, and she introduces you to the power of writing as a spiritual discipline through helpful tips and examples from her own journals.
'A remarkable work' - Irish Times The newly discovered diary of a wartime nurse makes for a fascinating, dramatic and uniquely personal insight into the experience of being on the frontline of service during the Second World War. As the war gets underway, eighteen-year-old trainee nurse Mary Mulry arrives in London from Ireland, hoping for adventure. Little does she know what the next seven years will bring. In this extraordinary account, Mary records in intimate detail her day-to-day life as a nurse, both on the Home Front and abroad. From nursing children during bombing raids in London to treating Allied soldiers in Normandy, Mary's experiences gave her vivid and unforgettable material for the private diary she was dedicated to keeping. We feel her strength of character during the risk of infection, the threat of shrapnel, and the ongoing hunger of rationing, but we also feel her warmth as she connects to her patients and, eventually, celebrates victory. Filled with romance, action, and an inevitable sadness, A Very Private Diary records the rich memories of an irrepressible personality that shone during our darkest hour.
Originally published in 1929, this book details the famous silent actor and sex symbol Rudolph Valentino and his lover Natacha Rambova’s travels back to Europe in 1923. Valentino kept a diary at this time, into which he faithfully recorded his thoughts whilst living the American dream, proving his naysayers back home in Italy wrong: “My Dream is coming true! From day to day, night to night, here and there, I am going to write down my impressions. I am going to put down on paper the things I think, the things I do, the people I meet, all of the sensations, pleasurable and profitable that are mine. I shall never go home, I said to myself, until I can go home somebody...”
This laugh-out-loud funny debut will please boys, girls, pigs, vegetarian farmers, ducks--everyone save for evil chickens. This is me. I is Pig! If you is reading this, you can read Pig, and you is very clever. Unless you is an Evil Chicken, in which case, don't read this!Pig is troubled. Usually, life on the Farm is pretty good. He has yummy slops, a true friend in Duck, mud to roll in, and Farmer to scratch his back and call him Roast Pig (his special nickname). But the Evil Chickens are up to something evil, involving a tractor-rocket. And Duck has something else to show his porcine friend: a shed where Farmer prepares to eat Pig for dinner!What can Pig do? If he goes in the Chickens' trocket, he might run out of slops. If he stays, he'll become sausages and bacon. But if Pig and Duck can come up with a plan that involves the chicken house, the trocket, some itchy sheep, and an imaginary fox--maybe they can fix the Farm...or maybe they'll land in even more trouble. Don't miss the hysterically funny debut from Emer Stamp and Pig!
Enhanced Edition of the bestselling Mrs Robinson's Disgrace, including author videos and podcasts On a mild winter's evening in 1850, Isabella Robinson set out for a party. Her carriage bumped across the wide cobbled streets of Edinburgh's Georgian New Town and drew up at 8 Royal Circus, a grand sandstone house lit by gas lamps. This was the home of the rich widow Lady Drysdale, a vivacious hostess whose soirees were the centre of an energetic intellectual scene. Lady Drysdale's guests were gathered in the high, airy drawing rooms on the first floor, the ladies in dresses of glinting silk and satin, bodices pulled tight over boned corsets; the gentlemen in tailcoats, waistcoats, neckties and pleated shirt fronts, dark narrow trousers and shining shoes. When Mrs Robinson joined the throng she was introduced to Lady Drysdale's daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Edward Lane. She was at once enchanted by the handsome Mr Lane, a medical student ten years her junior. He was 'fascinating', she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man's charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, which she was to find hard to shake... A compelling story of romance and fidelity, insanity, fantasy, and the boundaries of privacy in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality, Mrs Robinson's Disgrace brings vividly to life a complex, frustrated Victorian wife, longing for passion and learning, companionship and love.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian C. Vann Woodward and Chesnut's biographer Elisabeth Muhlenfeld present here the previously unpublished Civil War diaries of Mary Boykin Chesnut. The ideal diarist, Mary Chesnut was at the right place at the right time with the right connections. Daughter of one senator from South Carolina and wife of another, she had kin and friends all over the Confederacy and knew intimately its political and military leaders. At Montgomery when the new nation was founded, at Charleston when the war started, and at Richmond during many crises, she traveled extensively during the war. She watched a world "literally kicked to pieces" and left the most vivid account we have of the death throes of a society. The diaries, filled with personal revelations and indiscretions, are indispensable to an appreciation of our most famous Southern literary insight into the Civil War experience.