Short Diary Fiction

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.