This thesis is based on two aspects of the diary. The first being its relation to femininity and feminism. The second being, the private and public properties of the diary in terms of personal information and its accessibility. Even though diaries are idiosyncratic objects, encrypted or written in a cryptic manner, they are still deciphered, edited and published posthumously.

Through reading diary entries from Kathleen Collins, Beatrix Potter and Anaïs Nin, reading analysis of diaries (Bobbitt, Duin, Huff, Kutzer, Shikibu), reading about how to read a diary (Henderson) and conversing, writing and reflecting on diaries in my own diary, I concluded the following:

The diary is being regarded as a women’s medium because it used to be the only access to writing women had, making it a medium for self-expression and a feminist practice. This still holds value today, as the diary provides a platform for finding new meaning and connections without censoring oneself, which in turn are expanded on and contextualized. Writing in code or cryptic language provides control over privacy levels while revealing personal information.

Dear Thesy,

I wanted to write you as a hybrid thesis/diary in meta form. Writing about the diary in diary form would allow me to connect seemingly unrelated things, and play with accessibility and legibility (since diaries usually don’t require an audience). Initially, this approach was very helpful because it got me in a writing flow in which I could use diary writing as a research method.

But at some point I got a bunch of scrambled, raw material that became too inaccessible to a possible reader (for my taste). So I decided to weave parts of you into my thesis, honoring your original form, but making you a bit more accessible, I think...

Anyway, I wanted to thank you. You made me feel safe, and gave me the space to organize my thoughts, explore my attitudes and experiment with writing. You were a great listener and I loved having you as a non-judgmental companion. This also goes for everyone else who took the time to read previous versions of my thesis and for sharing great conversations and references with me: Dirk Vis, Lucas, Steven, Iben, Deniz, Goel, Pam.

Yours truly,

Jade

22 jan, talking to Thesy
Last year, the practice of journaling was implemented in the Design Research curriculum (taught by Marthe Prins and Benjamin Earl) to keep track of our process and research. This journal could take on any form; a catalogue, a collection of images or videos, interviews, writing, poetry, etc. For me the journal contained a very short fictional story, my personal reflections entangled with research and interviews. A comprehensive method that enabled me to get to the core of my fascination, but that also felt a bit exposing due to the publicness of the journal and the nature of my topic ¬– the relation between feminism and gender roles when it comes to sex. I felt the continuous tension between feeling empowered and feeling exposed.

To build on that experience, I set out to explore the diary as a topic and simultaneously as a research method. While maintaining a diary named Thesy, reading parts of diaries, and reading about how to read diaries, I wondered:

1. Why is the diary genre generally regarded as a female practice when in essence it is not, and what relation does the diary have to feminism? How does diary writing contribute to my own feminist practice?

2. To what extent do idiosyncratic mannerisms, cryptic writing, encrypting, and writing in code, reflect diarists’ intentions of keeping their diary private? How comfortable was I with sharing personal things myself?

5 dec, talking to Thesy
Thesy, klinkt een beetje knullig. Terwijl ik echt mijn ei kwijt kan bij je. Een plek om te broeden, een nest voor mijn creativiteit.

7 dec, talking to Thesy
Ik zag laatst van die filmpjes waar duiven belachelijk gemaakt worden omdat ze belabberde nestjes bouwen. Mensen treffen een duivenei aan naast één los takje. De patatkip: ze deponeren eieren en waggelen vervolgens weer vrolijk rond terwijl ze pikken naar frietjes.

Throughout history, the mundane experiences recorded in the diary have been regarded as trivial, and diaries from female keepers were less often preserved.

28 jan, talking to Thesy
Does that mean no one wants to read about me talking about pigeons?

For example, during World War II, when the Dutch Minister of Education called on everyone to keep a diary to record historical events and experiences, they found women’s diaries to be less valuable since their nature was more about personal, daily life events (Duin).

“The gender paradox within the literary history of the diary: the most celebrated and canonical diaries are those written by men but the genre as a whole is characterized as feminine.” (Henderson 54)

The diary has been regarded as a women’s practice because women had no other access to writing (Huff 10). Women were not expected to write anything brilliant, let alone expected to publish anything. And by pretending to write for themselves they were not overstepping their expectations or societal norms. In the Heian Period (794-1192) in Japan, women were not taught to write and only men knew how to write Chinese – the written language at that time. In order to express themselves, Japanese women, like Murasaki Shikibu, started to develop a phonetical Japanese script in which they could write their diaries. But the potential of expression also depends on the complexity of a language, which made Shikibu’s efforts to express complex thoughts in a still very artificial and inflexible medium even more impressive, not only contributing to women’s potential but the whole potential of the language (Shikibu 7-18).

The inferiority of genre also resides in the multiplicity of shapes and perspectives, making the genre ambiguous and hard to be classified. Ironically, this borderless, experimental nature provided the ultimate means to question the canon the diary genre positioned itself in (Huff 7). I am not done with irony yet. With diaries being too personal or lacking objectivity, they aren’t suitable sources for academic research, unless we label it artistic research...

22 feb, talking to Thesy
Talked to Deniz, who wrote her bachelor thesis in an academic setting and reflected on her diary entries as source material, but used a methodology that takes from artistic research in order to back up the form of her thesis (Hakman).

24 dec, talking to Thesy
No way!!! Henderson discusses how scholars researching the diary often start to discuss their own diary, implementing self-reflection into academic writing. And how this personal criticism clashes with the ‘sacred’ tradition of ‘objectivity’ in science. Yea, what is objectivity anyway? A bunch of subjects pretending to be objects?

“In rejecting the pretence of an objective and dispassionate critical stance, some scholars have instead argued for the necessity of identifying the personal and political stakes of academic research. Feminist literary criticism has been at the forefront of this practice as feminist critics recognize both the implicit gendering of the detached critical stance and the need to represent the particularities of women’s experiences.” (Henderson 17)

+ There are many forms of diaries (also called journals), kept in different social and historical contexts, with personal differences in methods, styles, and intentions. When I refer to diaries, I am not talking about autobiographies in which writers reflect on chunks of their life in retrospect. Rather, I am talking about reflections on daily life as it is lived. However, I am aware that these lines on occasion tend to get pretty blurry.

+ There are probably a lot of different motives when it comes to keeping a diary, but I wanted to discuss a few that I think are important in answering my questions. I mainly focused on female diarists in order to delve more into the diary’s connection to femininity and feminism.

1 dec, talking to Thesy(quite dramatically)
Why do we create? Do we create out of a primal or spiritual need for self-expression? Or are we a bunch of narcissists in existential confusion? Do we create out of fear of being forgotten after we die – do we try to tackle mortality by preserving ourselves in another creation (babies or art). Or do we feel most alive or significant when we are in creation mode?

According to Huff, women write to connect their inner world with the external world, as well to reflect on their personal growth (Huff 9). The renowned author Anaïs Nin, celebrated for her erotic literature and contributions to feminism, used her diary writing to stimulate personal development of women on a broader scale, as she mentions in Notes on Feminism.

“The diary was an escape from judgment, a place in which to analyze the truth of woman’s situation. I believe that is where the sense of freedom has to begin. A reformation of woman’s emotional attitudes and beliefs will enable her to act more effectively.” (Nin 25)

She was alive when her diaries were published, which enabled her to witness the responses to her diaries, that she then discussed in her new diaries in which she anticipated an audience as well.

22 dec, talking to Thesy
If the diary is essentially about connecting the inner with the outer world, the publication aspect creates another layer in which the external world responds.

She mentions a comment from Marguerite Duras in her diary: “Marguérite said: The diary is an ever-increasing whirlpool, stories within stories.”

Here I am, reflecting in my diary, on another person reflecting in her diary, on another person reflecting on the diary. An ever-increasing whirlpool indeed.

27 jan, talking to Thesy
The diary is such an enticing place for reflection, that almost anyone who keeps a diary reflects on why they keep their diary in their diary, and goes back to past entries to reflect on, and write about them again. As if we are talking to ourselves… Am I talking to myself?
Thesy: Yes.

Kathleen Collins reflected on her own diary entries and on why she kept a diary. When she was in labor for example, she recorded the moment in words so she could go back to these entries later, as if to press play and relive them. She contemplated that writing about moments in her life gave her more control over the present, giving these moments more weight and substance making them almost autonomous entities (Collins 42-5). Baggerman also discusses sense of time as motive to keep diaries, but relates it more to identity. To preserve the idea of an identity in times of great change such as the industrial revolution or in times of war (Duin).

I need to go back to Anaïs Nin for a bit. Because while I was reading her diary, I couldn’t help but feeling that she was bragging about herself. And I wondered if people were really that infatuated with her, or if she was just trying to convince her readers. Nin’s diaries turned out to be partly fictional or not as truthful as we (or as I would) expect a diary to be. Several analysis reveal these cracks; throughout her diaries she never aged, she systematically wrote in retrospect, regarded her work as published even as she was writing it, and her diaries contained several inconsistencies (Bobbitt 286-71). What if she was using her diary to fictionalize her life and to present herself in a better light? As soon as it was read by others who believed to be reading a truthful diary, her new identity would become reality.

Diary writing to preserve identity, or to reinvent identity?

2 dec, talking to Thesy
‘s nachts half dronken. Later op Kim haar verjaardag sprak ik Goel en ik had het over de Sims. Volgens mij is het spelen van de sims een manier om je te identificeren met een fictioneel karakter en die allerlei vaardigheden in een korte tijd te laten vergaren omdat ej weet dat je die in het echte leven nooit zal bereieken. En dat je langer bezig bent met het creeren van de sim; de stand van de ogen, het kapsel, de outfit, dan het daadwerkelijk spelen met die sim. Je bouwt een soort karakter, wat jij misschien had willen zijn. Alsof het digitaal met de poppen spelen is (ook leuk voor volwassenen). Ik vertelde over de bizarheid van wicked whims. De gehackte versie van sims die je als een soort plugin kunt downloaden zodat die zorgvuldig gevormde karakters in de sims ineens seks met elkaar kunnen ehbben op zo een maneir dat je alles kunt zien en kunt kiezen/klikken, goh misschien moeten deze 2 Sims nu op dit bankje orale seks met elkaar hebben. Ze kunnen ook van geslacht veranderen of seks met een sim van hetzelfde geslacht hebben. Ipv gecensureerde gepixelde Sim lichamen die de douche uit lopen zien we ineens een ongepixelde 3D pik hangen. Animaties gemaakt door fans via blender, geupload en tering vaak gedownload. (met gebruiksaanwijzing “this animation will work best if you also download cum_mesh_v2 and the big dick package – I especially recommend big dick uncut 1 and huge dick uncut”).

Henderson says it is tricky to establish diarists intentions when it comes to publication but she points out that some diarists benefit from sharing their personal, intimate moments, or revealing their secrets because it helps them in getting their work published (Henderson 19).

Maybe the ultimate, confident superwoman is easier created with some additional fiction. And while we all know that Wonder Woman is a fictional character, I guess Nin provides her readers with a ‘realistic’ role-model? Some intentions of diarists may seem self-absorbed or individualist, but through the space to challenge social and political surroundings that diaries provide, they don’t just empower the individual, but influence a wider range of people (Henderson 151).

Beatrix Potter also used the diary to create fiction. She wrote children’s stories with animals as main characters (such as Peter Rabbit), and intertwined illustrations of them with the text. Diary writing was for her a means to express her political attitudes and to rebel against the people that in real life she couldn’t speak out to. Through these stories she was able to deliver her societal critiques.

“…the stories hardly appear revolutionary at first glance: small in size and pastel in coloration, they seem unlikely candidates for subversive texts. But in many ways these texts, and particularly The Tailor of Gloucester, are coded texts or palimpsests—narratives that read one way on the surface and another way beneath. What they encode are complaints against hierarchy, authority, and power.” (Kutzer 12-3)

Even the diaries that were never meant to be published, printed and sold, are in a way publicized. The act of externalizing; translating the internal into something external, is a way of sharing and making things perceivable.

23 dec, talking to Thesy
While out for beers, playing some cards and chatting with Steven and Lucas the topic moved towards children. Steven asked me if I wanted children. I told him that it had become an apparent discussion point in my diary. He started telling us about how he found his moms diary once in the attic. It contained a picture of his mom when she was younger together with a man on the beach and their butts out, having ‘1980’ written on them with sunblock. Also a story of her jerking off her boyfriend in the woods. When I asked him if he felt like he was invading her privacy he said, “Oh yes absolutely, that’s why I only read a few pages”. When I asked him if he wasn’t crazy curious about the rest he said “yes of course, that’s why I still read those pages.” And then he added, “well it was also a bit hard to read or decipher. Most of it was written in a cryptic manner.

Maartje Duin made a podcast series called Mina & Mevrouw which is about the relationship between her great-grandmother of nobility and her servant. One of the sources they use is her great-grandmothers diaries that she kept throughout her whole life and which Duin and her family try to decipher. When Mevrouw (their great-grandmother) was younger she gossiped and discussed matters about love in her own secret language, and she would cryptically write about having a headache when she was on her period and add a little cross to refer to sexual encounters. However, when she got older her diaries would become more public; she would read entries out loud to her family, and handed them her diaries with the key to the code. It was her life’s work that was meant to be shared (Duin).

According to Henderson, diary writing in code has two functions, one of them being for convenience (e.g., shorthand and abbreviations), and the other to keep things private. For instance, for political reasons, to display discretion…

“I think of B . . . , of H . . . , of N . . . , of G . . . Whereas with D . . . or JW . . . or C . . .” (Collins 44)

…to hide sexual content, to create a deeper layer of privacy within personal writing, to create intimacy with those who know the code – generating different audiences (Henderson 94). However, the concealment of sensitive information often attracts more attention.

11 dec, talking to Thesy
1HJ 1BR 1SL 1HK 1MM 2HK 1FL 1FL 1SL 2HK 1BR 1IP 1GR
Alles of niets

April ‘23, Design Research journal
A few years ago someone told me about how she and her partner engaged in consensual non-consent sex. She pretended to be in a coma and he could by no means wake her up. The only way he could save her was by making her orgasm; by fucking her awake — the erotic consensual non-consent version of Sleeping Beauty. (Although the original story of Sleeping Beauty has nothing to do with consent; in which prince charming raped her while she was in a “deep sleep”.) My question was: what is the deal with rape fantasies? did i not tell you to keep out what are you doing here Why do some women fantasize about being overpowered, or being coerced into something they would clearly not want to happen in real life?

I have been using the word ‘code’ as something that hides information, while code, representing symbols, signifying meaning, is also a carrier of information. If you speak the language it carries information, if you don’t, it excludes. I won’t be talking about top-secret, complex algorithms. Rather, I just like to ponder about what code could encompass while discussing a DIY, garden variety of code.

Anselm Kiefer partly wrote his diary in shorthand/steno, a script or system that was originally developed to write quicker – as fast as speech – based on characters that phonetically represent sounds. Vowels are represented with dots or dashes and consonant with strokes (Publishing 1-12). Kiefer did not write in shorthand for convenience, but for privacy reasons so his mother could not read it. But any other person familiar with steno would be able to read it. In Journal intime he shared the intimate of his diary, which he placed behind vehicles representing the motion of the diary, and the transformation of meaning in words through time (Kiefer).

11 jan, talking to Thesy
Those steno devices in court are impressive. Multiple keys are pressed simultaneously and form a whole word or sentences in one movement. Sometimes, when I have to type something on someone else’s laptop with a different keyboard and keys in different locations, my fingers become speechless.

Beatrix Potter, wrote her diaries partly in a secret language which she created herself. Her code consisted of symbols that each represented a letter of the alphabet (mono-alphabetic substitution cipher code) which is not too hard to crack (the most occurring symbol is probably an ‘e’, and most common repeats ‘ss’, ‘ff’, ‘tt’, ‘ee’), and was eventually cracked by Linder (“Leslie Linder”). Self-made codes in diaries are usually combinations of symbols, other (non-sensical) letters, extractions from different languages and invented abbreviations (Kutzer 12).

11 jan, talking to Thesy
MSN en SMS afkortingen. brb, w8 ff, lama, mss, gwn. Doet me denken aan al de bizarre nieuwe Nederlandse afko’s. abbrev slang. Vrijmibo, itakru, esma.

!|< |3€|\| €€|\| |\|€|^|] #@#@, @$ @ |<!|] ! ±@|_|°)#± /\/\`/$€|_{ ±() \/\/|^!±€ \/€|^`/ |’-@$±, |3|_|± /\/\!|^|^()|^€|]


9 jan, talking to Thesy
When I write in Dutch I exclude non-Dutch speakers, which makes these parts more private, but strangely enough, also exposes me more. On the one hand because it becomes more exclusive and secretive, on the other hand because of the vulnerability attached to the Dutch. I find more nuance, complexity and depth in Dutch words -> words carry more meaning -> more vulnerability. (look at me, resorting to arrows rather than building complex English sentences.) My understanding of English is more flat and superficial, and functions as a filter I can hide behind. Just as we throw around container terms, containing many possible meanings or interpretations, making it so we communicate barely anything with them.

Just as Beatrix Potter used fiction as a medium or code to challenge society’s norms, poetry can also function as a code. A safe way to share intimate personal thoughts since the multiplicity of possible interpretation makes the information foggy.

I would like to argue that cryptic writing or writing in code may also be, apart from convenience and privacy reasons, for creative reasons. For the sake of art sake; creative, non-confirmative explorations and expressions. Like Emily Dickinson’s
line breaks
--dashes and +crosses, that were interpreted, ‘corrected’ and published, even though the author was never able to consent and we can't be sure about their meaning (Howe 131-48).

10 jan, talking to Thesy
☼ would ♡ 2 explore z code of 🂳 that only ☼ know. 4 ☼ it is ☓ so .demas about abc the <fact≶ that -.-- = abc , about abc / xxxxxx whl ✎. the code ☓ b 2 complex { =✄ 1 min. 2 ✎ z drow. ☼ ☁︎ ☼ will enibmoc e. from .-- languages/ U – symbols, sounds, icons, glyphs, abbrevs. This gives you total frdm t xprss yrslf, xplr yr ncnvntnl thghts, xttxtxdxs xnd crxxtxvxty outwith exposing yourself ot eht risk fo enoyna xxxxxxxxx
haha zag een Gummbah voorbij komen "ik heb één keer een keiharde lul gekregen van een gedicht, maar dat kwam omdat ik iets verkeerd had verstaan"
Additionally air is a currency you can add some random shovels scooping to create fist pumping confusion on top of horror \| shouldn’t take sleep for granted. I thought I had lost me, , but I always stay. We don’t want to see dead horses, so we make them out of Clay. and K

28 jan, talking to Thesy
i inspired this code on potters, kiefers, hildehard von bingen and emily dickinsons symbols and handwriting. also , good job on the copy pasting

A need to express oneself, in combination with a need for privacy, asks for creative ways to do so.

The diary is:
+ a tool to preserve the present and the self
+ a tool to (re)invent and express the self
+ a tool to connect and translate the inner world

+ a tool to explore and experiment
+ a tool to challenge and critique
+ a tool for empowerment
+ a tool for feminism

21 feb, talking to Thesy
Thesy: Allemaal leuk en aardig Jade, maar wat heeft het jou dan gebracht?

You brought me to a place rather than a file. A place to safely explore and experiment without needing a reader or claiming it deserves an audience. Maybe that takes off a certain pressure or gives me more confidence?

You also brought me to places that surprised me. For example, when you kept bringing me to the topic of pregnant people around me, and I was like: “Thesy, why?” And you were like: “well because you want to contemplate if you see yourself pregnant one day.”
And I was like: “Oh”.

4 dec, talking to Thesy
Last night I dreamt that my sister was pregnant. And she could sort of disconnect her belly from her body, weird. I think I've been playing the Sims too much with a very pregnant Sim. Or maybe it's because good friends are getting pregnant around me, and i am now the age i always thought to be the age of mothers. ------Ik denk soms aan baby’s maar besef dan ook weer wel; ik bloeide veel te laat en mijn leven gaat te snel.

21 feb, (still) talking to Thesy
Or when we started talking about the gender gap when it comes to age differences in romantic relationships, which lead to discussing Benjamin Button, and for some reason we were suddenly discussing pedophiles. But we also discussed addictive behavior, non-monogamous relationships, OnlyFans, the tension between flirting and harassment, and consensual non-consent. Discussing these topics with anyone would require some nuancing, political correctness and maybe even self-censoring – all forms of code that we are safe from in the diary. Even when we talk about the ideal of the safe space (artificial spaces created to enable groups to feel safe to share their minds), a space doesn’t automatically become safe by labelling it so. The friction lies in allowing everyone to speak their mind, but not allowing anyone to say anything that might hurt someone else in that space, and ignoring that friction in the process. The diary on the other hand is an actual safe space. Free to speak our mind, we can start to understand our mind, and we find ways to speak our mind outside the diary too, empowering ourselves. The tension between empowerment and exposure.

If you are afraid someone will read your diary, you can encode it. If you are afraid someone will decipher your code, well, actually, maybe you should be happy that someone is trying so hard to read your mind?

Am I a chicken for encoding my diary?
Thesy: Maybe? But maybe a breeding one that carefully tries to hatch an egg.

Writing cryptically or in code:
-- adds another layer of privacy
-- does not mean the writer wants to keep their diary private,
but keeps control over levels of privacy in ‘sharing’ the personal
-- could be in the form of poetry or fiction

April ‘23, Design Research journal
I must have fallen asleep because I don’t understand my current circumstances. It is a fragile limbo state where as soon as I realize that this is not reality, the haze snaps. Good thing I never realize.

Before I ended up here I think I was sunbathing somewhere. Without clothes = without tan lines = super. It made me a bit horny, lying there naked, flashing my body to the sun.

My sister once told me about a dream she had about me. She dreamt that I was sunbathing topless and that I had not applied sunscreen on my nipples, so they got sunburned. (She also thought it was a weird thing for her to dream.) now that I think of it, I probably have never put sunscreen on my nipples and as we speak — or as I am thinking — or as I am dreaming — my nipples actually tingle a bit. I am trying to let go of that thought so I can get my sleepy high going. in this lucid state I sometimes wander somewhere erotic and get these strange sleep orgasms. incidentally, I also feel wetness between my legs, indicated by the breath of wind that is there. Cool. a little moan escapes from my mouth and thát is just something that always startles me and wakes me up.

The sunlight now attempts to penetrate my eyes and my brain visualizes (in semi-limboland) how a thick beam of combined sunrays manages to penetrate me. But as the sun invades my eyes and they catch light again, I see that it is not the sun penetrating me but a real person. this person is sucking on my overheated nipples while holding me down. then spits on me and says ‘sunblock’.

5 jan, talking to Thesy
I was watching an interview with Joni Mitchell ("Joni Mitchell Interview" 00:01:24 – 00:04:38) in which she says she is foremost a painter and a musician secondary, applying painting principles to her music practice. She believes painting, poetry and music to be different languages that don’t always translate so well to other mediums. Is it about that feeling of losing track of time while creating, not making conscious decisions but intuitively adding more information?

If I try to draw parallels between writing and creating in other mediums; the, ‘just write what comes to mind and keep writing’ feels oddly similar to the way I feel when I am painting or drawing. You keep seeing new things and you keep translating them.

17 jan, talking to Thesy
“On the margins, in that gray area between the close of our day and the beginning of our dreams, lies the diary and our experience of it as readers and writers”(Huff 9)

Maybe that is the meditative effect, not knowing what we are going to write until we write it, making us readers simultaneously, enabling us to converse with ourselves and gaining new insights in the process as fulfilling side effect for the mind. I know that’s not what Huff meant, but I read something different in it and I liked it.

Akkerman, Jade. “A Design Research Journal about: Patriarchy, Feminism and Sexuality.” 12 Apr. 2023. Design Research, Royal Academy of Art.

Aldredge, Michelle. “The Gorgeous Nothings: The Envelope Poems of Emily Dickinson - Gwarlingo.” Gwarlingo, 10 Apr. 2021, gwarlingo.com/2014/the-gorgeous-nothings-emily-dickinsons-envelope-poems.

Bobbitt, Joan. “Truth and Artistry in the Diary of Anaïs Nin.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 9, no.2, 1982, pp. 267–76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831260

CBC News: The National. “Joni Mitchell Interview.” YouTube, 11 June 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUu1MvnAecc.

Collins, Kathleen. Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary. HarperCollins, 2019.

Duin, Maartje, host. Mina & Mevrouw. VPRO, 2024. https://www.vpro.nl/programmas/ovt/luister/fragmenten/Mina-en-Mevrouw.html

Flensner, Karin Kittelmann, and Marie Von Der Lippe. “Being Safe From What and Safe for Whom? A Critical Discussion of the Conceptual Metaphor of ‘Safe Space’.” Intercultural Education, vol. 30, no. 3, Jan. 2019, pp. 275–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2019.1540102.

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Henderson, Desirée. How to Read a Diary. 1st ed., Taylor and Francis, 2019.

Howe, Susan. “These Flames and Generosities of the Heart: Emily Dickinson and the illogic of Sumptuary Values.” The Birth-mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History. New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2015, pp. 131-53.

Huff, Cynthia. “That Profoundly Female, and Feminist Genre: The Diary as Feminist Practice.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 4, 1989, pp. 6–14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40003086

Kiefer, Anselm. “Journal intime”, 2023. Bilderstreit, 14 Oct. 2023 - 25 Feb 2024, Voorlinden, Wassenaar.

Kutzer, M. Daphne. Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code. Routledge, 2013.

“Leslie Linder and the Beatrix Potter Collection. V&A.” Victoria and Albert Museum, Londen. www.vam.ac.uk/articles/leslie-linder-and-the-beatrix-potter-collection. Accessed 12 Feb. 2024.

Nin, Anaïs, et al. Dagboek 1966-1974. Amsterdam, Bakker, 1981.

Nin, Anaïs. “Notes on Feminism.” The Massachusetts Review, vol. 13, no. 1/2, 1972, pp. 25–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25088197

Publishing, Pitman. Get started in shorthand Pitman 2000. Teach Yourself, 2010.

Shikibu, Murasaki. The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Penguin Classics, 1996.