Diaries

Book section : Chapter

The term ‘diary’ jostles, in this period, with an array of other descriptors, including memorial, journal, daybook, diurnal, diet-book, and ephemeris. This chapter will keep this generic messiness in mind by working with an expansive sense of form, both in terms of genre and materiality, in order to convey a wider range of diaries than has previously been described, including texts by non-elite and women writers. It will pay particular attention to three central tensions that inform many diaries from this period: the need to adhere to a set of formal conventions, while at the same time marking out an individual life; the attempt to express some version of inwardness, alongside a commitment to the inventorying of objects and the external world; and the challenge of representing the life from within the life, of simultaneously observing and being observed.

Authors: Smyth, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Host title: The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1640-1714
• Pages: 216-229
• Chapter number: 12
• Series: Oxford Handbooks
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2025-01-23
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198746843.013.14
• EISBN: 9780198746843
• ISBN: 9780198940470
• Language: English
• Keywords: diaries; genre; manuscript; print; women writers; popular culture; life-writing
• Subtype: Chapter