#My dear diary book full

They had never met since, though it was now three years since they parted, and they had not written since Imogene came abroad that is, Imogene had not answered the only letter she had received from her friend in Florence.Imogene then writes a letter starting, вЂњDear Diary,вЂќ which also addresses the recipient as вЂњDi.вЂќ She signs her letter вЂњJournalвЂќ and вЂњJ.вЂќ They were going to write every day, if only a line or two and at the end of the year they were to meet and read over together the records of their lives as set down in these letters. This time she wrote to a girl with whom she had been on terms so intimate that when they left school they had agreed to know each other by names expressive of their extremely confidential friendship, and to address each other respectively as Diary and Journal. (Howells was a major editor of his time, and I think this novel is the one time he reached the level of Edith Wharton heвЂ™s certainly more fun to read than Henry James.) Of his ingenue Howells said: PhillipsвЂ™s novel As in a Looking Glass (1889) takes the form of its heroineвЂ™s journal, and as narrator she occasionally addresses the book as вЂњdear diary.вЂќДЇurthermore, an actually good American novel, William Dean HowellsвЂ™s Indian Summer uses the convention even earlier, in 1886. But was that already a literary convention? I found that one real American girl who wrote вЂњDear DiaryвЂќ was Helen Keller, at least according to how American Anthropologist quoted her entry.

#My dear diary book full

I'm not sure if it's meant to suggest that the diarist needs the pretense of communication with someone in order to get permission to be so egotistical as to write about self, or that the diarist is so hungry for a friendly correspondent as to cast a few bound pages in the role (or so crazy as to think that the diary actually is a friendly correspondent?), or just what.So I turned to one of my favorite resources, Google Book, and asked it to search for the phrase вЂњDear DiaryвЂќ in its Full Text (i.e., mostly pre-1923) files. Since it's taken for granted in so many fictional diaries that they do, probably at least a few have done so, after having read the fictional diaries. Yesterday Oz and Ends reader and friend Ruth Berman responded to my remarks on Diary of a Wimpy Kid, whose narrator warns us, вЂњdonвЂ™t expect me to be all вЂdear diary thisвЂ™ and вЂdear diary that.вЂ™вЂќ Ruth wrote:ДЄs regards the girlish habit of writing to 'Dear Diary' - I wonder if any girls ever actually did that.