tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41397588098587558402024-03-13T04:55:48.088+00:00The Diary ReviewA vast, international and unrivalled collection of diary extracts - from over 1,000 diaristsPaul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.comBlogger1262125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-67688150903123833392024-03-03T16:44:00.001+00:002024-03-06T16:55:09.065+00:00Felled the hazel & ozier‘7 degrees below freezing point. Felled the hazel & ozier underwood in the plantation before the house, & got two small waggon loads of faggots from it.’ This is from the 18th century diary - or better described as a daily record - of John Longe, vicar for many years at Coddenham-cum-Crowfield in Suffolk. He is remembered largely for this daily record - not published until 2008 - which isPaul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-624242960019499832024-02-27T12:01:00.004+00:002024-02-27T12:01:40.635+00:00It all affects us terribly‘Anthony E[den] and Edward Wood are off to Geneva - and the farce begins again - talk, talk, talk - and all the time the nations are arming - and the Teuton faces the Slav as he did in 1914, and Fascism stands opposed to Communism. To us in this country it all seems so silly and unreal - and yet, whether we like it or not, it all affects us terribly.’ This is from the extensive diary kept by the Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-60450679496172594662024-02-26T17:05:00.001+00:002024-02-26T17:05:42.423+00:00 I am praying for your death’The newspapers are attacking me more furiously than ever, for my speech on the 14th, and I have a swarm of abusive letters. One good lady says: “I am praying for your death; I have been very successful in two other cases.” The whole nation seems to be mad with rage and hatred. Nevertheless, on reading my speech again, I think it was rather unwise and provocative.’ This is from a diary kept by Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-6783122404590251432024-02-23T18:26:00.081+00:002024-02-25T18:48:28.161+00:00A wonderful day of Life’A wonderful day of LifeVery sunny & fine.Left Fenton with Willie & E. soon after 10.at 11 - Glorious King Olaf a magnificent triumph.’These are a few lines from the diary of the famous English composer Edward Elgar, who died 90 years ago today. Five volumes of his diaries have been published so far, with two more volumes to come. But if the first volume is anything to go by, the majorityPaul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-19003379778188548882024-02-15T14:35:00.022+00:002024-02-18T14:50:32.713+00:00At last we are off‘At last we are off. The last of the cheering crowded boats have turned, the sirens of shore and sea are still, and in the calm hazy gathering dusk on a glassy sea we move on the long quest. Providence is with us even now. At this time of equinoctial gales not a catspaw of wind is apparent. I turn from the glooming immensity of the sea and, looking at the decks of the Quest, am roused from dreamsPaul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-49683388003238748422024-02-09T12:07:00.003+00:002024-02-09T12:07:39.282+00:00Am I going crazy?‘I guess I really am a queer fish. When I write poems, as I’ve done at a brisk rate for the past 4 hours, they come to me out of locked rooms - out of nowhere. It is the oddest thing! I feel hot, in the same way I imagine a poker player must feel hot. But what bothers me is my constant bouts of depression. Am I going crazy? What is wrong? Am I simply bitchy?’ This is an extract from the diaries Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-64065159569389754222024-02-09T11:39:00.000+00:002024-02-20T11:50:59.498+00:00I would like to be a manAmy Lowell, a colourful and influential personality in American poetry during the first quarter of the 20th century, was born 150 years ago today. Apart from writing her own poetry, she also promoted contemporary and historical poets; and she authored the introduction to an anthology of very early Japanese diaries translated into English. She did not, it seems, keep a diary herself apart from Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-2457551626345711842024-02-05T13:24:00.002+00:002024-02-20T12:10:37.732+00:00All sorts of coloursCountess Cowper, Lady of the Bedchamber to Caroline Princess of Wales, the highest ranking lady in Britain at the time, died three centuries ago today. Her much older husband, Earl Cowper, who had served as the first Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, had died a few months earlier. While at Court, the Countess kept a detailed diary - not published for more than a century - full of gossip, intriguePaul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-7321900560329271132024-02-04T07:30:00.006+00:002024-02-20T11:51:20.464+00:00Puffins, pipits and ploversToday marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the American ornithologist and painter of birds, Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Although there are no published books of his journals, Cornell University, which holds the Fuertes archive, has put online a journal kept by Fuertes while exploring the Alaskan coastline, though it is mostly a list of birds seen or shot at!
Fuertes was born in Ithaca, New Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-5722764070628464232024-01-24T17:08:00.003+00:002024-02-20T11:52:17.945+00:00Fat alligators in FloridaAndrew Ellicott, one of the most important early surveyors in the United States, was born 270 years ago today. He helped survey borders with Canada and with the Spanish territories, worked on the boundaries of the District of Columbia, and completed the plan for Washington D.C. Unpublished diaries kept by Ellicott on some survey expeditions have been used by biographers, but there is one diary hePaul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-49671368211680909122024-01-23T15:18:00.000+00:002024-01-27T09:26:18.695+00:00Luminous shardsEdvard Munch, one of Norway’s most famous sons, and the painter of one of the world’s most famous paintings, The Scream, died 80 years ago today. His so-called ‘private journals’ were published a decade or so ago by the University of Wisconsin Press. The book's editor has described the text as full of ‘luminous shards’ but, nevertheless, this work is not a journal/diary but a book of poetry. Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-64223115224791827372024-01-17T10:42:00.000+00:002024-01-17T10:42:08.377+00:00What’s in My Journal‘Odd things, like a button drawer. MeanThing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuousdiscards. Space for knickknacks, and for Alaska.’ This is part of a poem by the American writer, William Stafford, born 110 years ago today. He is said to have kept a daily journal for 50 years, but the only published extracts available online Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-88273352034305467002024-01-06T22:36:00.033+00:002024-02-20T11:53:00.347+00:00I must forget how to write‘I must forget how to write. I must unlearn what has been taught me.’ This is John Wieners, an American beat poet born 90 years ago today, writing in his diary aged but 24. He would go on to become part of the poetic renaissance of the late 1950s and 60s. His poetry, some said, brought with it a new candour regarding sexual and drug-induced experiences.
Wieners was born on 6 January 1934,Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-64915888092299223612023-12-28T12:22:00.019+00:002024-02-20T12:15:24.437+00:00An anguish of suffering‘On way home, at night, an anguish of suffering in the thought that I can never hope to have an intellectual companion at home.’ This is George Gissing, a British novelist, a purveyor of unrepentant gloom according to some, who died 120 years ago today. As a young man he became disastrously involved with a prostitute, and, later, he married a woman who went mad. His diaries were published in 1978Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-68003573572654115312023-12-22T09:00:00.001+00:002024-02-20T12:03:01.028+00:00Beatrix and BenjaminBeatrix Potter - author and illustrator of the much-loved Peter Rabbit books - died 80 years ago today. As a teenager and young woman, Potter kept a secret diary written in code. This was not deciphered and published until more than 20 years after her death, but it shows how (long before publication of The Tale of Peter Rabbit) she was already writing to herself about her rabbit, Mr Benjamin Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-31944165838859890212023-12-12T11:24:00.035+00:002023-12-13T11:56:08.536+00:00This won’t break us‘The day began with the barber telling me that, as of September 19, we will have to wear a badge bearing the word “Jew,” even six-year-old children. This won’t break us either, even though life will be made more difficult.’ This is from the diaries of Dr. Willy Cohn, born 135 years ago today, who was one of many thousands of Jews executed by the Nazis at Ninth Fort in Lithuania. According to the Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-42482857726116650482023-12-02T13:59:00.004+00:002024-02-20T12:03:22.193+00:00A very provincial ladyToday marks the 80th anniversary of the death of E. M. Delafield, a British writer much loved for The Diary of a Provincial Lady, first published in 1930, and its sequels. Although classed as fiction, the books - a journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman living in a Devon village - are considered to be thinly-veiled autobiography.
Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture was bornPaul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-4009936444487872922023-11-26T09:32:00.006+00:002023-11-28T09:44:03.399+00:00I feel shocked and ashamed‘The atomic bomb was used yesterday for the first time on the Japs. I must say I feel shocked and ashamed. Nobody knows what the effects of it, indirect or direct, will be on the area. I don’t think posterity will think it was a very creditable action.’ This is from the war diaries of Oliver Charles Harvey, first Baron Harvey of Tasburgh, born 130 years ago today. At the time, Harvey was Private Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-77385617129238798132023-11-18T19:56:00.045+00:002023-11-19T20:17:26.970+00:00What poems people are‘I felt more powerfully than ever today what poems people are; not the part of them that speaks, but the mysterious, intricate network of thoughts and feelings which remain unexpressed.’ This is from an early diary of Ruth Crawford Seeger, American composer and folk music specialist, who died 70 years ago today. Her diaries, though not published, have underpinned at least two biographies.CrawfordPaul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-34382184504180631332023-11-16T17:27:00.000+00:002023-11-16T17:27:44.359+00:00The Prospect of Constantinople‘The Prospect of Constantinople, when ye behold it from the top of the Channel, at the distance of two Miles, is beyond compare, as being to my Eyes, as to all that ever saw it, the most Charming Prospect that can be seen.’ This is from the published travel memoir/diary by Jean (or John) Chardin, born all of 380 years ago today. He was an obsessive traveller, revelling in the culture and riches Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-81096103163675281192023-11-14T10:17:00.000+00:002023-11-14T10:17:10.550+00:00Baekeland makes Bakalite‘I consider this days very successful work which has put me on the knot of several new and interesting products which may have a wide application as plastics and varnishes. Have applied for a patent for a substance which I shall call Bakalite.’ This is Leo Baekeland, born 160 years ago today and sometimes referred to as ‘The Father of the Plastics Industry’, writing in his diary on the very day Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-63191116567818901242023-11-08T17:34:00.000+00:002023-11-08T17:34:00.134+00:00Flying into an abyssIvan Bunin, the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, died 70 years ago today. Though admired for his short stories and poems, it was his diaries, written in the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and published in the 1920s, that brought him fame among his compatriot emigrés in France as well as wider attention within European literary circles. It was not until the Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-53880228150629181382023-11-04T09:30:00.002+00:002024-02-20T12:00:33.421+00:00Some great calamitieToday marks the 470th anniversary of the birth of Roger Wilbraham, a lawyer by training who held various high posts under Elizabeth I and James 1, and who was very charitable towards his native town of Nantwich. His diary, not printed until the first years of the 20th century, is of interest for its description of current affairs - not least the gunpowder plot of 1605 (‘some great calamite’Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-64975179228053147592023-10-31T11:56:00.004+00:002024-02-20T11:56:57.893+00:00Fellini’s dreamingThe great Italian film director, Federico Fellini, died 30 years ago today. He won four Oscars for best foreign language film, more than any other director, and is considered to be one of the most important and influential European directors of the 20th century. Although not a diarist, he did, for many years, keep a record of his dreams, with descriptions and richly-coloured illustrations. These Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4139758809858755840.post-47912936506496884922023-10-23T08:02:00.012+01:002024-02-20T12:04:07.579+00:00Self-exposing massacre‘For a fortnight JH and I have been trimming the fat from this volume, fat being the truth that endangers. The book still seems bloated, for I’m as fond of my fat as an analysand is of his fears: with each slice I scream. Yet here’s a hundred deleted wounds to others and to myself, lascivious narratives, family daguerreotypes, puerile anecdotes and dirty linen.’ This is the penultimate entry in Paul K Lyonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08355198374427824033noreply@blogger.com0