Blank Diaries, Journals (45112)

A diary or journal is a book for writing discrete entries arranged by date. It can be used for recording in advance of appointments and other planned activities, and/or for reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. more...

Home
Accessories
Address Books (45111)
Blank Diaries, Journals...
Book Covers (45113)
Book Plates (48831)
Bookmarks (45114)
Other (45115)
Antiquarian & Collectible
Audiobooks
Catalogs
Children's Books
Fiction Books
Magazine Back Issues
Magazine Subscriptions
Nonfiction Books
Other
Textbooks, Education
Wholesale, Bulk Lots

Such logs play a role in many aspects of human civilization, including governmental, business ledgers, and military records. Diaries run the spectrum from business notations, to listings of weather and daily personal events, through to inner exploration of the psyche, or a place to express one's deepest self. Some use the words "diary" and "journal" interchangeably while others apply strict differences to journals, diaries and journaling: dated, undated, inner focused, outer focused, forced, etc. The current preference (based on book and article titles) is to use the word "journal." The phrase "journaling" is often used to describe such hobby writing, similar to the term "scrapbooking."

Some diarists think of their diaries as a special friend, even going so far as to name them. For example, Anne Frank called her diary "Kitty". There is a strong psychological effect of having an audience for one's self-expression, a personal space, or a "listener," even if this is the book one writes in, only read by oneself.

More than 16,000 diaries have been published since book publishing began. See List of diarists.

Additionally, the diary is a popular form for works of fiction. See List of fictional diaries.

History

The word diary comes from the Latin diarium ("daily allowance", from dies, "day" - more often in the plural form diaria). The word "journal" comes from the same root (diurnus = of the day) through "journey".

The oldest extant diaries come from East Asian cultures, pillowbooks of Japanese court ladies and Asian travel journals being some of the oldest surviving specimens of this genre of writing.

Sales of "page a day" diaries go back hundreds of years (Letts, for example, is over 200 years old). At first, most of these books were used as ledgers, or business books. Samuel Pepys is the earliest diarist that is well known today, although he had contemporaries who were also keeping diaries. (John Evelyn for one.) Pepys also was apparently at a turning point in diary history, for he took it beyond mere business transaction notation, into the realm of the personal.

Until, it seems, around the turn of the 20th century, with greater literacy and industrialization throughout the globe, particularly the Western world, diary writing was mostly limited to the members of the higher social classes. In the West, at least, a high proportion of historical and literary figures from the Renaissance to the 20th century seem to have kept a diary. (see list below)

Tristine Rainer's 1978 The New Diary expanded awareness of diary-keeping as a literary genre, particularly among feminists. Acknowleding key figures in the resurgence of diary writing such as Carl Jung, Marion Milner, Ira Progoff and Anaïs Nin, she identified techniques that people use either spontaneously or have employed in their daily writing to explore themselves and their experience of the world. Rainer's idea, as expressed in the title, is that a diary is much more than a dry record of weather or daily events--it allows the writer to communicate deep and often spiritual realizations. Social historians were particularly interested in this, as it expanded greatly the number of historical texts available to them.

Read more at Wikipedia.org