Short Diary Fiction

A New Global Anthology

Desirée Henderson, Tracey Daniels-Lerberg

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781350348097
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Diaries capture the most intimate and revealing aspects of diarists' perception of themselves and the world around them. Throughout history, fiction writers have turned to the diary genre to maximize the intimacy and credibility of their narratives and to tell stories that bridge the personal and the social. This collection is the first to make visible the historical and global scope of short stories that use diaries as a structuring form or thematic inspiration. The book gathers twenty stories that span three centuries, from ten different countries and seven different languages. Although written in a range of styles from Romanticism to science fiction to Gothic to climate fiction, these stories cohere around key diary themes: privacy and publicity, self-discovery and self-delusion, love and sexuality, gender roles and social codes, time and technology, among others. Featuring an introduction to diary fiction, guiding headnotes, and a list of additional recommended reading, Daniels-Lerberg and Henderson's anthology makes a valuable intervention in literary history by illustrating the popularity of diary fiction across the globe and in diverse literary traditions. At the intersection of autobiographical self-narrative and riveting storytelling, these works of diary fiction promise to entertain, inform, and spark new ideas in both readers and keepers of diaries.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Editors’ Note
• Introduction
• 1 Henry James, “The Landscape Painter” (1866)
• 2 Constance Fenimore Woolson, “Misery Landing” (1874)
• 3 Anton Chekhov, “From the Diary of a Violent-Tempered Man” (1887)
• 4 Shiga Naoya, “The Diary of Claudius” (1912)
• 5 Lu Xun, “Diary of a Madman” (1918)
• 6 Marcel Aymé, “Tickets on Time, Extracts from the Diary of Jules Flegmon” (1942)
• 7 Virginia Woolf, “The Legacy” (1944)
• 8 Donald Barthelme, “Me and Miss Mandible” (1961)
• 9 Silvina Ocampo, “The Diary of Porfiria Bernal, the Account of Miss Antonia Fielding” (1961)
• 10 Wolfdietrich Schnurre, “Diary of a Dayfly” (1964)
• 11 Jane Bowles, “Emmy Moore’s Journal” (1973)
• 12 Ian McEwan, “Solid Geometry” (1973)
• 13 Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Diary of a Rose” (1976)
• 14 Gina Berriault, “The Diary of K.W.” (1982)
• 15 Ivan Vladislavić, “Journal of a Wall” (1989)
• 16 Sherley Anne Williams, “Meditations on History” (1989)
• 17 Greg Egan, “The Hundred Light-Year Diary” (1992)
• 18 Michelle Cliff, “A Public Woman” (1996)
• 19 Helen Simpson, “Diary of an Interesting Year” (2009)
• 20 Mpho Phalwane, “Per Annum” (2018)
• Recommended Further Reading
• Sources and Permissions
• Index