100 Diaries That Chronicled World Events

Oscar Wilde once wrote “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.” This book is your opportunity to discover a compendium of the most celebrated, revelatory, notorious and heart-wrenching diaries from the great, the good and the truly evil.

100 Diaries that Chronicled World Events introduces us to the world’s greatest diarists. Including the historical journals of Samuel Pepys and Anne Frank; snapshots of culture in the diaries of Frida Kahlo and Kurt Cobain; and windows into the past from Queen Victoria and John Adams.

These published journals present a unique insight into their time and place, featuring a diverse range of accounts from all over the world. Discover the doomed log of Arctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott and the philandering antics of Samuel Pepys: as well as the less well-known diary of Jakob Walter, a foot soldier who gave a vivid insight into the Napoleonic wars, or Mary Chesnut, a privileged planter’s wife in South Carolina, who chronicled the South’s decline in the Civil War.

About the Author

Colin Salter is a prolific author of literary history. For Batsford he has written 100 Books that Changed the World, 100 Letters that Changed the World and 100 Children's Books that Inspire our World. He is the author of a biography of Mark Twain and is currently working on a history of the books in one family's threehundred-year-old library. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife, dog and bicycle.