Daily Modernism: The Literary Diaries of Virginia Woolf, Antonia White, Elizabeth Smart, and Anaïs Nin (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780773520219)

Redrawing established boundaries between genres, Podnieks builds a broad critical and theoretical range on which she maps the diary as an aesthetic work, showing how diaries inscribe the aesthetics of literary modernisms. Drawing on feminist theory, literary history, biography, and personal anecdotes, she argues that the diary is an especially subversive space for women writers. Podnieks details how Virginia Woolf, Antonia White, Elizabeth Smart, and Anaïs Nin wrote their diaries under the pretence that they were private, while always intending them to be published. She travelled extensively to examine the original diary manuscripts and offers unique first-hand descriptions of the manuscripts that underscore the artistic intentions of their authors. Daily Modernism contributes to the ongoing feminist revision of literary history and, in its disruption of traditional concepts of "major" and "minor" literary forms, paves the way for a much needed reconsideration of the diary as a valid literary achievement.

Author: Elizabeth Podnieks
ISBN-10: 077352021X
ISBN-13: 9780773520219
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/26/2000
Pages: 424
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.69lbs
Size: 9.32h x 6.46w x 1.54d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2001 pg. 226