The diary is a somewhat recent method of culture in Western Europe and the beginning of the Americas, coming about mainly from a religious (Christian) need to chart one’s spiritual progress towards God. The history of diaries themselves furthers this point that these texts should be viewed as personal rather than private documents.
Thus, although these diaries were ‘private’ in a sense, they followed many ‘public’ cultural conventions, therefore it is ideal to refer to these writings as being personal texts, rather than private ones. Therefore, they followed certain conventions of form and style that was considered appropriate of the time as a means of expressing reflection. These diaries were created and shared by a literary class as a means to reflect. Although it may seem to be presenting an individual’s notions and ideas, on closer look many diaries can resemble diaries written in the same place and time. 113).Īlthough at first diaries can seem familiar and thus easy to read for the historian, they are not as simple as may seem. Therefore, they must be treated with some caution and one must analyse them with “reference to their origin, production, dissemination and survival” (Sangha & Willis, 2016, p. It can be tempting to consider personal documents to be more “sincere” than other primary source material, however “they too were the products of social and cultural ideas and practises, and they had their own set of rules, methods and conventions of production” (Sangha & Willis, 2016, p. Diaries can effectively reveal differences in language and expressive styles of the past, as well as pointing to the historical change and continuity of ideas of the self, social values and relations and ideas of work, which diaries can capture in a more intimate and focused manner.
A diary comes directly from the author, creating an intimate perspective of who the person was, or at the very least who they are portraying themselves to be. Diaries as a historical source can often seem familiar and easy to read as a source for the historian, as they are generally plain-spoken and riddled with detail.
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