DIARIES AND JOURNALS OF LITERARY WOMEN FROM FANNY BURNEY TO VIRGINIA WOOLF Also by Judy Simons and published by Palgrave Macmillan FANNY BURNEY JANE AUSTEN'S SENSE AND SENSIBILITY: A Masterguide JANE AUSTEN'S PERSUASION: A Masterguide Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf Judy Simons Principal Lecturer in English Sheffield City Polytechnic ~ MACMILLAN ©Judy Simons 1990 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE. Any person who docs any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1990 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstokc, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-45607-1 hardcover ISBN 978-0-333-52341-4 ISBN 978-0-230-37644-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230376441 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 04 03 02 OJ 00 99 98 97 96 For my mother and father Acknowledgements I should not have been able to complete this book without the award of a Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust and for this I am most grateful. In addition I should like to thank my academic colleagues who have supported and encouraged the project, in particular Ian Baker for his patience in reading the manuscript and Shirley Foster for her continued enthusiasm and helpful advice. I should also like to thank the women members of Network and of the Research Group in Women's Studies 1600- 1830 for allowing me a stimulating forum for discussion of work in progress. The extracts from the unpublished diaries of Louisa May Alcott and Abigail Alcott are quoted by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Extracts from the unpublished diaries of Edith Wharton 190~1926 are reproduced by permission of Watkins/Loomis Agency Inc. In addition I am obliged to the Curator of the Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, for permission to quote from the Edith Wharton manuscript material in their posses sion. I should like to thank the staffs of both these libraries for their help in locating material. I am grateful to the Executors of the Virginia Woolf Estate and the Hogarth Press for permission to quote from the five volumes of The Diary of Virginia Woolf 1915- 1941, ed. Anne Olivier Bell; to Oxford University Press for permis sion to quote from Fanny Burney, Selected Letters and Journals, ed. Joyce Hemlow (1986) and from The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Mary Moorman (1971); to Clarendon Press for permission to quote from The Journals of Mary Shelley 1814-44, ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert (1987), and from The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay) 1791-1840, vol. IV (1973). vi Contents Acknowledgements vi 1 Secret Exhibitionists: Women and their Diaries 1 2 The Fear of Discovery: The Journals of Fanny Burney 19 3 Self and Shadow: The Journal of Dorothy Wordsworth 40 4 Dark Imagery: The Journal of Mary Shelley 61 5 Behind the Scenes: The Early Diary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 83 6 The Double Life: The Journal of Louisa May Alcott 106 7 The Life Apart: The Diaries of Edith Wharton 128 8 The Mask Beneath the Mask: The Journal of Katherine Mansfield 149 9 The Safety Curtain: The Diary of Virginia Woolf 169 10 Conclusion 189 Notes 205 Select Bibliography 213 Index 215 vii I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. - Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act III. 1 Secret Exhibitionists: Women and their Diaries Diarists, that shrewdly innocent breed, those secret exhibitionists and incomparable purveyors of sequential, self-conscious life -Gail Godwin 'Do you really keep a diary?' Algernon asks Cecily in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. 'I'd give anything to look at it. May I?' 'Oh, no,' she answers, covering it instinctively with her hand. 'You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publica tion. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.'1 Wilde's play was written during 1894, five years after the publication in English of the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian artist who had died of tuberculosis at the romantically young age of twenty-four. On its appearance, Bashkirtseff's diary, with its startling, candid tone and its unabashed personal confi dences, had caused a literary sensation, and had started something of a vogue for intimate confessional reminiscences among well bred young women with imaginative aspirations. The Importance of Being Earnest contains several references both to diary-writing and to other literature written by women - Miss Prism, the governess, has in her past produced 'a three volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality' and Wilde makes suggestive connections between these forms of women's private and public writing. As Marie Bashkirtseff had herself written most provoca tively shortly before her death, 'The record of a woman's life, written down day by day, without any attempt at concealment, as if no one in the world were ever to read it, yet with the purpose of being read, is always interesting: for I am certain that I shall be found sympathetic, and I write down everything, everything, everything. Otherwise why should I write?'2 1