366 Lives, One Day at a Time

What is more personal, more intimate, than the diary? Throughout time and across the world, humans from all walks of life have kept diaries: they are the repositories of our most unvarnished truths, our most poignant hopes, hidden desires and our deepest fears. Now, in Diaries of Note, Shaun Usher – bestselling author of Letters of Note – collects 366 of the most noteworthy diary entries ever written, one for each day of the leap year, each authored by a different individual.

The diary welcomes all to its pages, and through this book you will encounter world leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, Theodore Roosevelt and Emperor Uda, artists and writers, like Frida Kahlo, Seamus Heaney, David Sedaris and Shirley Jackson, film stars and musical icons, including Brian Eno, Emma Thompson and Elton John, as well as people whose lives were never illuminated by fame – yet their diaries reveal them to have been extraordinary.

Beautifully illustrated with woodcut-style drawings, Diaries of Note is a book to spend time curled up with, exploring a world of human emotion and experience that by turns reflects and expands our own and is a testament to the power of personal narratives.