Inscribing the Daily
Critical Essays on Women's Diaries
Edited by Suzanne L. Bunkers and Cynthia A. Huff
University of Massachusetts Press
These fifteen essays explore the rich texture of women's diaries written in America and Europe over the past two centuries. The authors use a variety of critical methodologies to examine the diary as a text, as a form of women's self-inscription, as a window to the diarists' historical and contemporary lives, and as a theoretical tool that allows us to question longstanding assumptions.
These essays are pertinent, illuminating, and frequently moving. The literary, philosophical, and psychological dimensions of diary-keeping by women are explored here in ways that will be immensely useful not only to women's studies scholars but to students of autobiography and the diary as well.'—James Olney, editor of Studies in Autobiography
'In the very active field of autobiography, Inscribing the Daily will be the first collection of essays devoted entirely to diary literature. As such, it should command wide and favorable attention.'—Margo Culley, editor of American Women's Autobiography
'In a historical moment when public interest in personal writings has never been so high, when literary criticism itself is becoming more personal and 'autobiographical' and when interest in tracing the writer's creative process and in studying how gender and self are constructed is equally high, I think this stimulating book of essays will find a wide audience.'—Rebecca Hogan, editor of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies
Professor of English at Mankato State University, Suzanne L. Bunkers is author of four books, including The Diary of Caroline Seabury, 1854-1863. Cynthia A. Huff is associate professor of English at Illinois State University and author of British Women's Diaries: A Descriptive Bibliography of Selected Nineteenth-Century Women's Manuscript Diaries.
