ABOUT THIS BOOK

As a diary writer imagines shadow readers rifling diary pages, she tweaks images of the self, creating multiple readings of herself, fixed and unfixed. When the readers and potential readers are husbands and publishers, the writer maneuvers carefully in a world of men who are quick to judge and to take offense. She fills the pages with reflections, anecdotes, codes, stories, biographies, and fictions. The diary acts as a site for the writer’s tension, rebellion, and remaking of herself.

In this book Martinson examines the diaries of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Violet Hunt, and Doris Lessing’s fictional character Anna Wulf, and shows that these diaries (and others like them) are not entirely private writings as has been previously assumed. Rather, their authors wrote them knowing they would be read. In these four cases, the audience is the author’s male lover or husband, and Martinson reveals how knowledge of this audience affects the language and content in each diary. Ultimately, she argues, this audience enforces a certain “male censorship” which changes the shape of the revelations, the shape of the writer herself, making it impossible for the female author to be honest in writing about her true self.

Even sophisticated readers often assume that diaries are primarily private. This study interrogates the myth of authenticity and self-revelation in diaries written under the gaze of particular peekers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Deborah Martinson is associate professor of English writing and women’s studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles.

REVIEWS

“In the Presence of Audience is a substantial contribution to the current interest in non-fiction writing, whether that be termed life writing or autobiography or diary. Martinson goes beyond the usual—in her claims, and in her juxtapositions of diary with fiction in each author’s case. Her reading of Virginia Woolf—the longest in the book—is superb.” —Linda Wagner-Martin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“This solid study is likely to appeal to both an academic audience and members of the wider community with an interest in women’s diaries or women’s writing generally.” —Lee Edwards, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: In the Presence of Audience: The Self in Diaries and Fiction
1. Virginia Woolf's Diary: "Whom do I tell when I tell a blank page?"
2. Katherine Mansfield: " 'Damning little notebooks[s]' tell their own story"
3. Violet Hunt: Mythmaking in "Her Book of Impressions"
4. Deborah Lessing's The Golden Notebook: "An Exposed Position"
Notes to chapters
Works consulted
Index
 

Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: English diaries Women authors History and criticism, English prose literature 20th century History and criticism, Women and literature Great Britain History 20th century, Authors and readers Great Britain History 20th century, Women authors, English Biography History and criticism, Lessing, Doris May, 1919- Golden notebook, Mansfield, Katherine, 1888-1923 Diaries, Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941 Diaries, Hunt, Violet, 1862-1942 Diaries, Women in literature, Self in literature