Elsa Binder was twenty when, in October of 1941, German forces carried out a brutal massacre of thousands of Jews in her hometown of Stanislawów, Poland. Two months later, she and her family were compelled to enter the Stanisławów Ghetto, joining 20,000 others in a harrowing fight for survival. It was in this time of…
Charles Baudelaire, born in Paris in 1821, is best known for Fleurs du Mal, a thrilling and controversial poetry collection that led to him being prosecuted when published in 1857. Sadly, his life was riddled with personal and financial struggles, and when he wrote this entry in his journal, Baudelaire’s health, both mental and physical,…
Born in Belgium in 1912 and raised in the United States, May Sarton was a writer who mastered various literary forms during her career, from evocative poetry and compelling novels through to a number of deeply introspective journals in her later decades. One of her greatest is Journal of a Solitude, kept over the course…
On the evening of 10th January 1969, after a tough day at work, guitarist George Harrison opened his diary and in three words noted that he had quit the world’s most popular band. For a week the Beatles had been rehearsing at Twickenham Film Studios, their efforts captured on camera for a documentary film. However,…
Everything changed for British musicologist Clive Wearing in 1985, the year he contracted herpesviral encephalitis. The disease severely damaged his memory-forming brain regions, leading to one of the most extreme cases of anterograde amnesia ever recorded and a memory span that lasts between 7 and 30 seconds, each moment experienced as a fresh awakening, a…
Patricia Highsmith was an author who mastered the art of the psychological thriller, leaving an indelible mark on the genre with works like The Talented Mr. Ripley, published in 1955, and her compelling debut, Strangers on a Train—two highlights from an incredible collection of 22 novels. After her death in 1995, the discovery of fifty-six…
Antonia White, born Eirene Botting in 1899, was a British writer who won plaudits for Frost in May, a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1933 in which her experiences in a Catholic convent school were vividly depicted. At this point in her life, White had been married three times, and she had two young daughters who…
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