From Childhood to Girlhood: The Diary of a Young Artist (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9788027308705)

Marie Bashkirtseff's diary was first published in 1887, and was only the second diary by a woman published in France till that date. It was an immediate success. British Prime Minister William Gladstone referred to her diary as "a book without a parallel", and another early admirer was George Bernard Shaw. Her diary was cited as an inspiration by the American writer Mary MacLane, whose own shockingly confessional diary was written a bare generation later, and it was mentioned as a model by later writers who became known for their diaries, including Pierre Louÿs, Katherine Mansfield, and Anais Nin. Bashkirtseff's diary has been called "a strikingly modern psychological self-portrait of a young, gifted mind," and her urgent prose, which occasionally breaks out into dialogue, remains extremely readable. She was multilingual and despite her self-involvement, was a keen observer with an acute ear for hypocrisy, so that her diary also offers a near-novelistic account of the late nineteenth century European bourgeoisie. A consistent theme throughout her journal is her deep desire to achieve fame, inflected by her increasing fear that her intermittent illnesses might turn out to be tuberculosis.

Author: Marie Bashkirtseff, Mary J. Safford
ISBN-10: 8027308704
ISBN-13: 9788027308705
Publisher: E-Artnow
Language: English
Published: 12/30/2020
Pages: 72
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.24lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.15d