Accidental Diarist

Regular price €34.99
Regular price €36.50 Sale Sale price €34.99
19th century
A01=Molly A. McCarthy
accounting
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
almanacs
america
Author_Molly A. McCarthy
automatic-update
blogs
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJK
Category=HBTB
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
colonial times
commercial diary
commonplace
COP=United States
criticism
culture
daily minutiae
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
exquisite biography
george washington
grammar
humanity
journaling
language
Language_English
notetaking
PA=Available
personal
planners
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
self-obsessive recording
softlaunch
stationery staples
telling time
tracking finances
tweets
ubiquitous document
united states history
us civil war
words
writing
written introspection

Product details

  • ISBN 9780226033358
  • Weight: 397g
  • Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
  • Publication Date: 03 Jul 2013
  • Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

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In this era of tweets and blogs, it is easy to assume that the self-obsessive recording of daily minutiae is a recent phenomenon. But Americans have been navel-gazing since nearly the beginning of the republic. The daily planner - variously called the daily diary, commercial diary, and portable account book - first emerged in colonial times as a means of telling time, tracking finances, locating the nearest inn, and even planning for the coming winter. They were carried by everyone from George Washington to the soldiers who fought the Civil War. And by the twentieth century, this document had become ubiquitous in the American home as a way of recording a great deal more than simple accounts. In this appealing history of the daily act of self-reckoning, Molly McCarthy explores just how vital these unassuming and easily overlooked stationery staples were to those who used them. From their origins in almanacs and blank books through the nineteenth century and on to the enduring legacy of written introspection, McCarthy has penned an exquisite biography of an almost ubiquitous document that has borne witness to American lives in all of their complexity and mundanity.
Molly A. McCarthy is associate director of the Humanities Institute at the University of California, Davis.