List of diarists

This is an international list of diarists who have Wikipedia pages and whose journals have been published.

A

• John Adams (1735–1826), 2nd President of the United States, statesman and diplomat
• John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), 6th President of the United States, statesman and diplomat
• James Agate (1877–1947), English writer and critic
• Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), American novelist
• William Allingham (1824–1889), Irish poet
• Isaac Ambrose (1604–1664), English Puritan
• Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881), Swiss philosopher, poet and critic
• Harriet Arbuthnot (1793–1834), English associate of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
• Takeo Arishima (有島 武郎, 1878–1923), Japanese novelist
• Lady Cynthia Asquith (1887–1960), English writer

B

• Martha Ballard (1735–1812), American midwife and healer
• W. N. P. Barbellion (1889–1919), English naturalist, essayist and short story writer
• Marie Bashkirtseff (1858–1884), Ukrainian painter and sculptor
• Fred Bason (1907–1973), English bookseller, broadcaster and writer
• Peter Hill Beard (born 1938), American photographer in Africa
• Cecil Beaton (1904–1980), English fashion, portrait and war photographer
• Ruth Benedict (1887–1948), American anthropologist
• Tony Benn (1925–2014), English politician
• Alan Bennett (born 1934), English writer and playwright
• Arnold Bennett (1867–1931), English novelist
• Hélène Berr (1921–1945), French writer on Nazi occupation of Paris
• Alfred Bestall (1892–1986), English illustrator, best known for Rupert Bear stories
• Nicholas Blundell (1669–1737), English squire
• Stanley Booth (born 1942), American music journalist
• James Boswell (1740–1795), Scottish chronicler of Samuel Johnson
• Patrick Breen (1795–1868), American member of The Donner Party, who suffered while stranded in the wilderness in the winter of 1846/47
• Vera Brittain (1893–1970), English author and feminist
• Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), English composer
• David Bruce (1898–1977), American ambassador
• Nathaniel Bryceson (1826–1911), Victorian clerk
• Reader Bullard (1885–1976), English diplomat
• Fanny Burney (1752–1840), English novelist and memoirist
• Richard Burton (1925–1984), Welsh actor
• William Byrd II (1674–1744), Colonial American diarist

C

• Meg Cabot (born 1967), American YA author
• Alastair Campbell (born 1957), Anglo-Scottish journalist, broadcaster and author
• Emily Carr (1871–1945), Canadian artist
• Jim Carroll (1949–2009), American author, poet and musician
• Lewis Carroll (Charles L. Dodgson, 1832–1898), English writer and mathematician
• Violet Bonham Carter (1887–1969), English politician, daughter of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith
• Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999), Argentine fiction writer and collaborator with Jorge Luis Borges
• Judy Cassab (1920–2015), Australian artist
• Henry "Chips" Channon (1897–1958), Anglo-American politician and author
• John Cheever (1912–1982), American novelist
• Claire Lee Chennault (1890–1958), American World War II General, head of the Flying Tigers
• Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823–1886), American who described life in South Carolina in the American Civil War
• Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944), Mussolini's Italian foreign minister
• Emil Cioran (1911–1995), Romanian writer and philosopher
• Alan Clark (1928–1999), English politician and historian
• Andrew Clark (1856–1922), Scottish diarist and cleric
• Ralph Clark (1755 or 1762 – 1794), Scottish naval officer
• Lady Anne Clifford (1590–1676), English literary patron and correspondent
• Kurt Cobain (1967–1994), American rock musician, Nirvana's lead singer
• Mary Coke (1727–1811), English diarist and correspondent
• Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo, c. 1451 – 1506), Italian explorer and colonizer^[1]
• Richard Crossman (1907–1974), English politician and writer
• Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), English occultist and poet
• Marie Curie (1867–1934), Polish physicist and chemist
• Adam Czerniaków (1880–1942), Polish head of the Warsaw Ghetto's Judenrat

D

• Thomas Dallam (1570 – after 1614), English organ builder (diary 1598–99, voyage to Turkey and description of it)
• Gregorio Dati (1363–1435), Florentine merchant
• Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: see Lewis Carroll
• George Bubb Dodington (1691–1762), English politician and nobleman
• Pete Doherty, English rock musician (Babyshambles), (born 1979), ex-Libertines
• Anna Dostoyevskaya (1846–1918), Russian wife of Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), Russian novelist
• Marguerite Duras (1914–1996), French novelist and scriptwriter
• Bob Dylan (born 1941), American musician and songwriter

E

• Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904), Swiss explorer and writer
• Dickon Edwards (born 1971), British musician and dandy
• Mircea Eliade (1907–1986), Romanian historian of religion and mythologist
• George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans, 1819–1880), English novelist
• Edward Robb Ellis (1911–1998), American writer and reporter
• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), American writer
• Brian Eno (born 1948), English musician, record producer and polymath
• John Evelyn (1620–1706), English writer, scholar and gardener

F

• Marianne Faithfull (born 1946), English singer and actress
• St. Faustina Kowalska (1905–1938), Polish mystic and secretary of Divine Mercy
• Eliza Fay (1756–1816), English traveller to India
• Celia Fiennes (1652–1741), English traveler
• Zlata Filipović (born 1980), Bosnian child and adult diarist in Sarajevo
• F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), American writer
• Marjorie Fleming (1803–1811), Scottish child diarist
• Anne Frank (1929–1945), Dutch child diarist in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam
• Miles Franklin (1879–1954), Australian author
• Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle (1789–1857), English wife of Thomas Fremantle (Royal Navy officer), main contributor to The Wynne Diaries
• Donald Friend (1915–1989), Australian artist
• Robert Fripp (born 1946), English musician
• Max Frisch (1911–1991), Swiss playwright and novelist
• Buckminster Fuller (1895–1993), American designer and engineer

G

• Wanda Gag (1893–1946), American artist and children's author
• André Gide (1869–1951), French author
• Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), American beat poet
• Petr Ginz (1928–1944), Czechoslovak author, artist, editor, and Holocaust victim
• Mary Gladstone (1847–1927), English political diarist
• Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945), Nazi German Propaganda Minister
• Gilles de Gouberville (1521–1578), French seigneur in Cotentin, Normandy
• Francine du Plessix Gray (born 1930), Franco-American author
• Bob Greene (born 1947), American journalist
• Charles Greville (1794–1865), English civil servant and cricketer
• Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837–1914), American abolitionist and women's rights activist
• Eugénie de Guérin (1805–1848), French writer
• Che Guevara (1928–1967), Argentine revolutionary
• Alec Guinness (1914–2000), English actor

H

• Peter Hagendorf (fl. mid 17th c.), German mercenary in the Thirty Years' War
• Harry Robbins Haldeman (H. R. Haldeman, 1926–1993), American political aide involved in Watergate
• Richard Hammond (born 1969), English TV presenter
• Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (both 1981–1999), American schoolboy perpetrators of Columbine High School massacre
• Keith Haring (1958–1990), American artist
• Peter Hawker (1786–1853), English army officer and sportsman
• Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893), 19th President of the United States
• Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp (1759–1818), documented life in the Swedish royal court and elite, 1775–1817
• Philip Henslowe (c. 1550–1615), English theatre producer
• Etty Hillesum (1914–1943), Dutch Holocaust victim.
• George Hilton (1673–1725), English gentleman diarist^[2]
• Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945), Nazi and commander of the SS^[3]
• Edmund C. Hinde (1830–1909), American participant in the 1850s California Gold Rush
• Henry Hitchcock, American lawyer serving under General William Tecumseh Sherman
• Louisa Gurney Hoare (1784–1836), English writer on education
• Richard Hoare, second baronet (1758–1838), English antiquary and traveler
• Lady Margaret Hoby (1599–1605), English gentlewoman
• John Hobhouse (1786–1869), English politician and Member of Parliament
• William Holland (1746–1818), English country clergyman
• Karen Horney (1885–1952), German psychoanalyst
• Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), English poet and priest

I

• William Ralph Inge (1860–1954), English cleric and author
• Julia, Lady Inglis (1833–1904), English diarist with an account of the 1857 Siege of Lucknow
• Arthur Crew Inman (1895–1916), American poet who wrote a diary of 17 million words
• Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986), English-American novelist

J

• Alice James (1848–1892), American sister of novelist Henry and philosopher William
• Derek Jarman (1942–1994), English painter, filmmaker and gardener
• Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914–1977), Brazilian writer and social activist
• Jahanra Imam (1929–1994), Bangladeshi writer and political activist
• John Beauchamp Jones (1810–1866), American novelist and Confederate War Department clerk
• Liz Jones (born 1958), English writer and journalist
• Ralph Josselin (1617–1683), rural English cleric
• Ernst Jünger (1895–1998), German entomologist and Wehrmacht officer

K

• Franz Kafka (1883–1924), German-language novelist in Czechoslovakia
• Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), Mexican painter
• Alfred Kazin (1915–1988), American writer and critic
• Friedrich Kellner (1885–1970), German justice inspector and author
• Fanny Kemble (1809–1893), English actress
• Harry Graf Kessler (1868–1937), Anglo-German diplomat and writer
• Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Danish philosopher and theologian
• Francis Kilvert (1840–1879), English country cleric
• Lincoln Kirstein (1907–1996), American writer, impresario and connoisseur
• Aya Kitō (1962–1988), Japanese sufferer from spinocerebellar ataxia
• Paul Klee (1879–1940), Swiss-German painter
• Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), German artist
• William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874–1950), Canadian Prime Minister
• Victor Klemperer (1881–1960), German scholar and writer

L

• Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940), Swedish writer, first female winner of Nobel Prize for Literature
• Luca Landucci (1436–1516), Florentine apothecary
• Mark Latham (born 1961), Australian Labor Party politician
• Valery Larbaud (1881–1957), French author
• Paul Léautaud (1872–1956), French writer and author of Le Journal Littéraire
• James Lees-Milne (1908–1997), English biographer, historian and secretary of National Trust Country House Committee
• Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007), American author
• Élisabeth Leseur (1866–1914), mystic
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001), American wife of the aviator, who described the kidnapping of their child
• Anne Lister (1791–1840), English landowner, diarist and lesbian
• Courtney Love (born 1964), American actress and rock musician
• Narcissus Luttrell (1657–1732), English historian and politician

M

• Henry Machyn (1496/1498 – 1563), English clothier
• Harold Macmillan (1894–1986), UK Prime Minister
• Charles Malik (1906–1987), Lebanese philosopher and diplomat
• Thomas Mann (1875–1955), German novelist and Nobel Prize in Literature winner
• Judith Malina (1826–1915), German-born American actress and co-founder of Living Theatre
• John Manningham (died 1622), English lawyer
• Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), New Zealand modernist fiction writer
• Megan McCafferty (born 1973), American YA author
• Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉, 1644–1694), Japanese haiku and renga poet
• Fujiwara no Michinaga (藤原 道長?, 966–1028), Japanese poet and ruler
• Alanis Morissette (born 1974), Canadian singer and songwriter
• Helena Morley (1880–1970), Brazilian YA writer
• Roger Morrice (1628–1702), English Puritan minister and political commentator
• Lena Mukhina (1924–1991), Soviet teenager during Siege of Leningrad
• Chris Mullin (born 1947), English Labour politician and writer
• Arthur Munby (1828–1910), English poet, barrister, and solicitor
• Iris Murdoch (1919–1999), Anglo-Irish novelist

N

• Stevie Nicks (born 1948), American singer/songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac
• Harold Nicolson (1886–1968), English diplomat, politician and author
• Vaslav Nijinsky (1890–1950), Russian ballet dancer and choreographer
• Anaïs Nin (1903–1977), Cuban/French lover of Henry Miller, writer of erotica, pornography and poetry
• Leonard Nolens (born 1947), Belgian poet

O

• Joyce Carol Oates (born 1938), American author
• John Olsen (born 1945), Australian artist
• Iris Origo (1902–1988), English-born biographer
• Joe Orton (1933–1967), English playwright
• George Orwell (1903–1950), English author, journalist, essayist and critic
• Cynthia Ozick (born 1928), American author

P

• Michael Palin (born 1943), English member of Monty Python team, actor and travel writer
• Frances Partridge (née Marshall), (1900–2004), English writer
• George S. Patton (1885–1945), American World War II general
• Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827), Colonial American painter
• Emily Pepys (1833–1877), English child diarist (diary 1844–1845)
• Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), English civil servant (diary 1660–1669)
• Elizabeth Percy, Duchess of Northumberland (1716–1776), English peeress
• Ananda Ranga Pillai (1709–1761), Indian dubash of French India
• Josep Pla (1897–1981), Catalan writer
• Sylvia Plath (1932–1963), American poet
• James K. Polk (1795–1849), 11th President of the United States
• John William Polidori (1795–1821), English poet, writer and physician
• Beatrix Potter (1866–1943), English children's book writer and illustrator
• Hana Maria Pravda (1916–2008), Czechoslovak/English actress and Holocaust survivor
• Dawn Powell (1896–1965), American writer
• Ferenc Pulszky (1814–1897), Hungarian politician
• Barbara Pym (1913–1980), English novelist

R

• Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1925), President and later Prime Minister of Bangladesh
• Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), 40th President of the United States
• Märta Helena Reenstierna (1753–1841), Swedish gentlewoman
• Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1887), English lawyer
• Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), 26th President of the United States
• Ned Rorem (born 1923), American composer
• Henry Rollins (born 1961), American singer for Black Flag
• Barbara Rosenthal (born 1948), American avant-garde New Media artist/writer/performer
• Everett Ruess (1914–1934), American artist, poet and explorer
• Dudley Ryder (1691–1756), English Lord Chief Justice (diary 1715–16)

S

• George Sand (1804–1876), French writer
• May Sarton (1912–1995), American poet and novelist
• Rudy Sarzo (born 1950), Cuban-American rock bassist, most notably of Ozzy Osbourne fame
• Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), English poet and author
• Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912), English Antarctic explorer
• Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), Scottish novelist and poet
• Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917–2007), American historian and political adviser
• George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Irish Nobel Prize-winning playwright
• Robert Shields (1918–2007), American teacher
• Michael Shiner (1805–1880), American freed slave and Navy Yard worker
• Sei Shōnagon (清少納言, c. 966 – 1017/1025), Japanese lady-in-waiting at imperial court in middle Heian period
• Emily Shore (1819–1839), English young adult
• Malla Silfverstolpe (1782–1861), Swedish salon hostess
• Elizabeth Simcoe (1762–1850), English wife of Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada
• Nikki Sixx (born 1958), American bassist/songwriter for Mötley Crüe
• John Skinner (1772–1839), English cleric, amateur antiquarian and suicide
• Philip Slier (1923–1943), Dutch typesetter and Holocaust victim
• Stephen Spender (1909–1995), English poet
• Sufia Kamal (1911–1999), Bangladeshi writer and political activist
• Frances Stevenson (1888–1972), English mistress and second wife of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George
• Joseph Stilwell (1883–1946), American World War II general
• George Templeton Strong (1820–1875), American lawyer
• Rosemary Sutcliff (1920–1992), English historical novelist for children and young adults
• John Swete (1752–1821), English cleric and artist
• Richard Symonds (1617–1660), English Civil War diaries

T

• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), Russian composer
• Henry Teonge (1620–1690), English naval chaplain (diaries 1675–76 and 1678–79)
• Daniel Terdiman (living), American award-winning journalist
• John Thomlinson (1692–1761), cleric (diary 1717–1722)
• Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), American author and philosopher
• Hester Thrale (1740–1821), Welsh author, friend and confidante of Samuel Johnson
• Sophia Tolstaya (1844–1919), Russian wife of author Leo Tolstoy
• Anne Truitt (1921–2004), American artist
• Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), 33rd President of the United States
• Meta Truscott, (1917–2014), Australian chronicler and local historian (diaries 1934–2014)
• Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892–1941), Russian poet and writer
• Thomas Turner (1729–1793), English shopkeeper

V

• Marie Vassiltchikov (1917–1978), Russian princess involved in plot to kill Adolf Hitler
• Queen Victoria (1819–1901), British queen and empress

W

• Alice Walker (born 1944), American author
• Cosima Wagner (1837–1930), German daughter of Franz Liszt, second wife of Richard Wagner
• Richard Wagner (1813–1873), German composer
• Sabrina Ward Harrison (born 1975), Canadian artist and author
• Andy Warhol (1928–1987), American artist
• Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966), English novelist
• Simone Weil (1909–1943), French philosopher
• Denton Welch (1915–1948), English writer and painter
• John Wesley (1703–1791), English theologian and founder of Methodist movement
• Gilbert White (1720–1793), English naturalist and Anglican cleric
• Opal Whiteley (1897–1992), American naturalist and nature writer
• Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), Romanian-American author
• Kenneth Williams (1926–1988), English comic actor
• Charlotte Williams-Wynn (1807–1869), English gentlewoman
• Edmund Wilson (1895–1972), American writer and critic
• Robert Woodford (1606–1664), English lawyer
• James Woodforde (1740–1803), English rural cleric
• Charles Woodmason (c. 1720–1789), American author, poet and loyalist (South Carolina journal late 1760s)
• Wilford Woodruff (1807–1898), 4th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), English author and feminist
• Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855), English poet, sister of William Wordsworth

Y

• Zina D. H. Young (1821–1901), American 3rd President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Relief Society

Diaries of disputed authenticity

• The Black Diaries, diaries purportedly written by Roger Casement detailing his alleged homosexual activities. Believed by some to be a forgery perpetrated by the British government.

See also

• List of Australian diarists of World War I
• List of dream diaries
• List of fictional diaries
• List of fictional diaries § Hoax diaries

References