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Many are acquainted with at least parts of Anne Frank’s diary. Her honest portrayal of an ordinary young girl’s life during one of the most tumultuous periods in recent history has kept her words alive far beyond her time, humanizing the suffering of millions. While she remains the most famous example, Anne Frank is not the only one to have recorded their thoughts, dreams, and daily moments in a diary that became a significant historical document.
10. Florence Wolfson
On her 14th birthday, August 11, 1929, Florence Wolfson received a red leather-bound diary. She filled its pages daily for the following five years until other priorities led her to set it aside.
In 2003, when the building where she once lived began clearing out its storage area, the diary was discovered alongside steamer trunks and vintage dresses. It was almost thrown away, but a building engineer saved it and handed it to a writer and a lawyer. Together, they made an effort to track down the young woman in the photograph found inside the diary.
And they did track her down—90 years old when the diary was returned to her. Inside the pages of her red leather journal was an extraordinary window into life at the dawn of the 20th century, a time of rapid progress, while the shadows of the Depression and World War I loomed over the world.
Wolfson’s memories provide a vivid portrayal of what it was like to live in New York City during that era. Born to Russian immigrants, she was the daughter of a doctor and a high-end dressmaker. She reminisced about playing tennis and horseback riding in Central Park, taking trips to the Catskills, and meeting the boy who would eventually become her husband.
Yet the diary also reveals how little life truly changes. While the circumstances may differ, she writes about the challenges in her parents’ marriage, her obsession with her appearance, and her longing to resemble the models she saw on the runway. She documents her struggles in pursuing her dreams of a career in art or literature and the heartbreak that followed. She writes of her desire for love, her boyfriends and girlfriends, and her yearning to feel complete.
It’s a priceless look into an ordinary life, illustrating that no matter how much the world evolves, the human soul remains fundamentally unchanged.
9. Friedrich Kellner
At the close of World War II, many Germans denied that ordinary citizens had been fully aware of the Nazis' true intentions. However, one man’s diary shattered this claim. Born in 1885 into a modest family, Friedrich Kellner grew up to marry an office clerk and serve in World War I. After reading Mein Kampf, he was horrified to realize that Hitler was serious.
On September 26, 1938, Kellner began chronicling the rise of the Nazi Party from the perspective of an everyday citizen, writing from his Laubach apartment. He noted, “I fear that few decent people will remain after events have taken their course, and that the guilty will have no interest in seeing their disgrace documented in writing.”
His predictions proved unsettlingly accurate. As a German citizen who refused to join the Nazi Party, Kellner felt a duty to ensure that everyone was held accountable for what they knew and what they did. He collected newspaper articles, speeches, propaganda, military reports, and obituaries, all while documenting his own feelings about the situation in his homeland.
Most importantly, he wrote about events that people would later deny were publicly known, including the atrocities against Jewish people and those in mental hospitals, who had been marked for extermination as individuals unworthy of life. He uncovered the mindset of many average citizens, who believed the war had to be won—not because they supported Hitler's actions, but due to what would happen to them if they lost.
For years, Kellner kept his 10-volume, 1,000-page diary hidden in a secret compartment in his dining room cabinet. Unable to resist the Nazis directly, he safeguarded his writings as a future weapon to expose the truth and prevent such evil from recurring. When his American grandson, Scott, whom he had never met, tracked him down in Germany in 1960, Kellner finally found someone to entrust with the truth.
Despite his grandson's efforts to get the diary published, it nearly disappeared. After multiple rejections, the original volumes were eventually displayed at Texas A&M’s George Bush Presidential Library, where they finally caught the attention of international newspapers and magazines. Plans to publish a biography of Kellner, produce a documentary, and release the diary as a book in Germany were set in motion.
8. The First Fleet Journals
The First Fleet refers to the fleet of ships that transported over 1,500 settlers from England to their new home in New South Wales. The journey began on May 13, 1787, with a diverse group of military officers, families, and convicts. The ships first sailed down the coast of Africa, crossed the Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro, then circled back around the Cape of Good Hope before continuing on to Australia.
The State Library of New South Wales holds a collection of diaries and journals written by some of the passengers, chronicling their daily lives during the voyage and their first impressions of the land they would call home. Some, such as Arthur Bowes Smith and William Bradley, sketched illustrations of kangaroos and plants—novel sights that would have been completely foreign to most Europeans at the time.
Jacob Nagle joined the fleet as a sailor. A native of Pennsylvania, he had served in the American Revolution and was captured by the British. Afterward, he chose to pledge loyalty to the Royal Navy and was sent aboard the First Fleet. His journal documents his exploration of Botany Bay, the crew’s mishap on a reef near Sydney Cove, and the daily life of a low-ranking sailor.
Other diaries, such as that of Lady Penrhyn’s surgeon Bowes Smith, provide details on the convicts’ names and crimes, offering a more intimate perspective on the lives of the passengers and crew. He also records their initial encounters with the Indigenous people and sketches the first-ever European depiction of an emu.
7. Nasir Khusraw
In 1046, Nasir Khusraw was serving as an administrative clerk in what is now Tajikistan when he abruptly left his position and embarked on a “quest for truth.” While the exact nature of the truth he sought remains unclear, his detailed accounts of the journey offer a fascinating glimpse into the 11th century.
Khusraw’s travels spanned seven years. His diaries describe the multitude of languages spoken in the city of Akhlat, where even the most humble townspeople could converse fluently in three languages. He recounts life in Tripoli, where the people lived in constant fear of a Byzantine invasion. He observes that in cities where churches, mosques, and synagogues were often situated close together, the people crossing paths on their way to worship shared a mutual respect for one another, even as they continued to practice their own distinct beliefs.
In Hamath, Syria, he suggests that the river was named Asi (meaning “rebellious”) due to its passage through Byzantium, marking the boundary between the lands of the faithful and those of the infidels. His travel memoir, published as Safarnama, explores the personal interactions between people and their religions, their cities, and the landscapes they inhabit.
6. Mary Chesnut
Mary Chesnut was fortunate to be born into a privileged life. As the daughter of a governor and a member of the House of Representatives, she married a lawyer eight years her senior in 1840. In February 1861, she began chronicling daily life during the Civil War in her diary. Upon her death in 1886, childless, her best friend inherited her diary, which was published in 1905 under the title A Diary from Dixie. It remains one of the most valuable resources for understanding everyday life in the Carolinas during the Civil War.
Despite Mary’s extensive education and proficiency in several languages, her diary is celebrated for its complete lack of political bias and literary flair, instead offering a straightforward recount of events as she experienced them. While we may imagine a senator’s wife enjoying a life of privilege, that was far from the reality in the mid-1800s. Political wives often knitted socks for soldiers while going without shoes themselves, raised families during times of financial hardship, and moved so often they had no real sense of home.
Mary’s diaries bring a personal touch to the war, keeping it from becoming detached or impersonal. On one page, she describes the joy of receiving a basket of cherries, only to be followed by the crushing fear that came with a stack of telegrams listing the dead. On another, she reflects on the judgmental newspapers that condemned women flaunting their finery while their husbands fought at the front. According to her account, Mary sold her dresses.
She also wrestles with the mystery of why a female slave, who had served as a nursemaid to a young family, refused to leave Columbia with Mary’s family. Her diary recounts weddings and funerals, delving into how the death of a loved one affected those left behind—something often overlooked on the losing side of war.
5. Herman Kruk
In the early days of World War II, refugees fleeing Warsaw found themselves in a precarious existence in Vilna. Herman Kruk, a former librarian, was one of these refugees. He documented the daily life within the Vilna Ghetto in his diary, which was later published in 2003 as The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944.
Kruk’s diary is a poignant record of his personal fears and emotions, as well as the stories of his family, friends, and neighbors. He also shares whispered accounts of the atrocities the Nazis were committing in the killing fields of Ponar and during the uprisings in the ghettos. While in the ghetto, Kruk founded a library and reflected on the task of sorting through looted books under Nazi supervision, wondering whether he was saving them or selecting them for destruction.
Despite the constant threat of violence, Kruk managed to convince the ghetto’s council to purchase Jewish texts and letters. He also ensured that books were set aside for prisoners working in labor camps. He detailed the power struggles within the ghetto, the efforts to maintain education for the children, and his disapproval of certain political views and moral compromises among some of his fellow Jews. His writings, captured in real-time, document life in the ghettos, and he was eventually deported for his beliefs.
Approximately 20,000 Jews resided in the Vilna ghettos, where they strove to preserve their cultural traditions. They built theaters, attended poetry and dance recitals, and held concerts. By January 1942, most of the exiles to Vilna had been killed. In March 1942, Kruk wrote, “Life is stronger than anything.”
In September 1943, Kruk was transported to an Estonian concentration camp. One year later, he made his final diary entry and buried it in front of six witnesses. The following day, Kruk and the remaining Jews were executed. The day after their deaths, the Soviet Army liberated the camp, and Kruk’s diary was recovered by one of the surviving witnesses.
4. Robert Shields
Robert Shields, a former English teacher and minister, left behind one of the most extensive and longest diaries ever recorded after his death in 2007. Beginning in 1972, he felt an overwhelming urge to document every detail of his life—ranging from significant events to overly specific notes about his urination habits and bowel movements, more than anyone would want to read. He slept in two-hour increments so he could document his dreams and spent about four hours each day typing up his daily report while dressed only in his underwear.
Shields completed his diary in 1996 and donated the entire collection to Washington State University in 2000. Stored in 81 cardboard boxes, the collection even includes items like receipts and samples of his nose hairs, just in case anyone wants to perform DNA testing on the author of the diary.
Each page of his diary is oddly meticulous. Time is divided into blocks that list every single minute of his day, including actions like turning on the stereo and noting the music he listened to, watching TV shows and providing summaries, lipreading psalms, and listening to the radio, complete with song titles and details about on-air callers. He also documented the precise amounts of food he consumed, where it came from, and who bought it, occasionally including the receipts. An extraordinary amount of space is dedicated to his bathroom habits, from reading materials to the color and consistency.
3. Alexander Berkman
At the turn of the 20th century, Alexander Berkman, a Russian immigrant, carried out what he called the first act of terrorism on American soil by attempting to murder steel plant manager Henry Frick. Frick, who reported directly to Andrew Carnegie, had become entangled in a strike involving 3,000 workers, state militia, and Pinkerton agents. Although Frick survived the assassination attempt, Berkman was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Berkman’s motivations trace back to his early years. Born in 1870 into a merchant family in Russia, he first encountered the power of violence for change when a bomb detonated outside his school following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. These events influenced Berkman’s view that assassination could be a legitimate tool for changing the world, a conviction that persisted even after he emigrated to the US at the age of 18.
Once in the US, Berkman edited anarchist journals, helped organize unemployed workers in New York, and spent time in prison for his involvement in labor strikes. In December 1919, during the Red Scare, he was deported back to Russia. He began his diary with this pivotal event.
Berkman’s diary spans from 1920 to 1922, during which he wrote extensively about the Russian Revolution and its impact on everyday people. He recounts his return to his homeland and the warm reception he received from fellow revolutionaries, who saw him as a hero who had fought for the common folk. They asked him to speak, to tell them that the injustices plaguing the world were no different from those in America, and to assure them that the starving masses were on the verge of a revolution that would bring change. His entries describe the struggles he witnessed in every corner of the land, and he writes about the graves of those who perished fighting for the rights of the worker.
However, Berkman’s enthusiasm faded as he grew disillusioned with the harshness of the Bolsheviks, leading him to leave Russia in December 1921. His diary ends at that point and was later published as The Bolshevik Myth.
2. Stanislaus Joyce
Known as “Stannie” to his friends and family, John Stanislaus Joyce was the younger brother of the literary icon James Joyce. Despite working as an office clerk, Stanislaus’s diaries offer a rare and candid look into the life of one of the most enigmatic figures in literature.
Stanislaus began documenting his life at the age of 18. James often read these entries, using his brother’s musings as a constant source of inspiration. While James traveled from Ireland to Paris and Rome, Stanislaus remained in Dublin, keeping his brother up to date on events. He also financially supported James, a gesture he grew to resent, particularly when James broke promises to dedicate Dubliners to him and to include a character inspired by Stanislaus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
When the time came for an official biography of James to be written, Stanislaus’s diary served as a key reference. It offers a fascinating look at a strained family dynamic, with Stanislaus candidly describing their mutual disdain for Catholicism and religion. He portrays James as a deliberate rebel, intentionally distancing himself from the church, while the brothers struggled to reconcile their views on religion with their deeply religious mother.
1. George Fletcher Moore
George Fletcher Moore, born in Ireland and a graduate of Trinity College, initially faced rejection for a legal role in Australia’s new Swan River settlement. In 1832, undeterred, he set out for the colony, purchasing sheep and leasing a farm just outside York, despite his lack of official standing.
Moore’s diaries provide a detailed account of his experiences in the developing Australian colony. He documented his agricultural ventures and the tensions between settlers and the Indigenous population. Unlike many of his European contemporaries, Moore developed an appreciation for the Aboriginal people, learning their language, traditions, and stories. Still, he was not exempt from the strife, expressing frustration when his pigs were stolen by the Indigenous community.
Moore was quickly appointed secretary of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society, and he chronicles a life full of both official duties and personal adventures. His diary includes accounts of social events such as balls and celebrations, alongside his exploration of new grazing territories, river expeditions, and the personal challenges faced by his family. He shares tales of rescue missions sent to find ships thought to have sunk in Sharks Bay, encounters with extraordinarily tall natives, and the hardships of hunting kangaroos for food. Moore also writes about his efforts to translate the Lord’s Prayer into the Aboriginal language and teach missionaries how to effectively communicate with the Indigenous population.
Moore went on to document hundreds of Aboriginal words, detailing their pronunciations, meanings, and the accompanying gestures often used. He recorded terms for various animals and plants, turning his diary into a valuable cultural resource that offers insight into the Aboriginal language and way of life.
