A fascinating and important collection of extracts from women’'s diaries through the centuries, including such iconic voices as Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Frank, with a selection of pieces for every day of the year.

Organized around the calendar year, in this engaging anthology, now in paperback with a beautifully illustrated new cover, you’ll find Lady Anne Clifford in the seventeenth century and Loran Hurnscot in the twentieth both stoically recording the demands of an unreasonable husband; Joan Wyndham and Anne Frank, at much the same time, but in wildly different settings, describing their first experiences with sex; and Anne Lister (TV’s Gentleman Jack) in eighteenth-century Yorkshire exploring her love affairs with women alongside Alice Walker in twentieth-century California.


“Totally addictive.”
– Alice Loxton, The Daily Telegraph

“An intriguing, highly snackable guide to women’s experiences.”
– The Independent

“A modern classic.”
– Alison Weir, author and historian

“The sort of book you return to again and again.”
– Tracy Borman, author and historian

About The Author

Sarah Gristwood is a biographer, journalist, and commentator on royal affairs. Her previous books include the bestselling Arbella: England’s Lost Queen, The Tudors in Love, and biographies of Beatrix Potter, Winston Churchill, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, and HM Queen Elizabeth II. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Honorary Patron of Historic Royal Palaces, and regularly contributes to TV documentary series and coverage of royal events. She lives in Kent.