The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives at the Morgan Library

Thoreau's diaries

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) relied on her diary to escape stifling work as a schoolteacher; Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) confided his loneliness and self-doubt; John Steinbeck (1902–1968) struggled to compose The Grapes of Wrath, and Bob Dylan (b. 1941) sketched his way through a concert tour.

For centuries, people have turned to private journals to document their days, sort out creative problems, help them through crises, comfort them in solitude or pain, or preserve their stories for the future. As more and more diarists turn away from the traditional notebook and seek a broader audience through web journals, blogs, and social media, a new exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum explores how and why we document our everyday lives. Drawn from the Morgan’s own extraordinary holdings, The Diary: Three Centuries of Privates Lives is on view from January 21 through May 22, 2011.

The exhibition raises questions about this pervasive practice: what is a diary? Must it be a private document? The diaries on view allow us to observe the birth of such great works of art as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter and Gilbert & Sullivan’s opera The Pirates of Penzance. Momentous public events, from the Boston Tea Party to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, are marked by individual witnesses. Many diarists, such as Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) and John Newton (1725–1807), former slave trafficker and author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” look inward, striving to live with integrity. Three great artists in their twenties, all on the brink of fame — Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), Charlotte Brontë, and Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) — hone their talents in their private writings. And century after century, many individuals — from the diarist Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) to Abstract Impressionist painter Charles Seliger (1926–2009) — capture memory and mark time by keeping a daily record of the substance of everyday life.

"The museum is noted for its holdings of manuscripts, sketches, letters, drawings, and other items that speak to the creative mind at work," said William M. Griswold, director of the Morgan. "Diaries are particularly useful and revealing. They offer a real-time glimpse of the ways individuals of various eras and backgrounds have chosen to document their lives, thoughts, and personal struggles."

Exhibition Highlights

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the seminal journal of Henry David Thoreau, whose dozens of marbled-papercovered notebooks record his well-examined life. Like many diarists writing over many centuries in a variety of forms, Thoreau sought "to meet the facts of life — the vital facts — face to face." Thoreau’s monumental journal stands alongside the beautifully printed first editions of the confessions of St. Augustine (354–430) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), both transformative figures in the history of self-examination and self-revelation.

The exhibition illustrates that many writers envisioned (or invited) an audience. The marriage notebooks of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) and his wife, Sophia (1809–1871), for example, were interactive documents. The newlyweds made entries in tandem, reading each other’s contributions and building a joint narrative of their daily lives, from Nathaniel’s first contribution — "I do verily believe there is no sunshine in this world, except what beams from my wife’s eyes" — to Sophia’s breathless declaration "I feel new as the earth which is just born again." Later, their young children added naïve drawings to the pages of their parents’ notebooks, transforming the marriage diary into a family affair.

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) — one of the twentieth century’s most prolific diarists — made a thick copy of her astonishingly intimate personal account, presenting to a friend "this uncut version of the Diary in memory of our uncut uncensored confidences and faith." Nin is one of several featured examples of diarists who sought a wide audience through traditional publication before the advent of the web. William S. Burroughs (1914 – 1997), a prolific diarist, published one of his journals during his lifetime — The Retreat Diaries (1976), a dream log he kept during a two-week Buddhist retreat in Vermont. Even Queen Victoria (1819–1901) released a volume of excerpts from her journals; a signed copy of her 1868 bestseller Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands is on view.

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Culture and Arts, Relationships and Going Places, Literature and Poetry, History

The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives at the Morgan Library

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