Women’s Diaries and Journals
At our in-person meeting on 12 July 2025 we discussed in no particular order the following aspects of women keeping diaries and journals:
Marika had prepared the session and and chaired the discussion. session:
Do diaries and journals offer insights into women’s lives?
Sharing examples from the past and present by OFN sisters and women across time: whose voices are missing from published diaries and journals and what are the consequences are of this silence? Are women who keep diaries and like writing looking to be published? Now women can write blogs online.
We discussed women who could not keep a diary or journal because of their war experiences. Women involved in the resistance did not write about it at the time. It would have been dangerous for them to write diaries or keep journals that could have put themselves or others in jeopardy. Women, particularly those involved in the anti-fascist resistance would either write about their experiences after the war or not write at all about their often heroic activities.
Hilde Coppi was a German communist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. She was a member of an anti-fascist resistance group during the war which became known as the Red Orchestra. Hilde and Hans Coppi were arrested in 1942. She was pregnant and gave birth in prison. She was beheaded in January 1943. She never kept a diary. A film based on her life From Hilde, With Love was screened at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2024 and is now screened in Britain in independent cinemas.
Katherine McCarthy, a nun who nursed Allied soldiers in the Second World War, was part of the French resistance. She was caught by the Gestapo and after 13 months solitary confinement in France, via Belgium and several prisons in Germany she was incarcerated in Ravensbrück Concentration camp. McCarthy survived the war but she never wrote anything down about her activities: spying, and sabotage; during the time it was too dangerous and after liberation of the camp she spent the rest of her life in a convent in Ireland nursing old people.
Rosa Luxemburg wrote about politics and theory, personal letters survive. In prison she wrote letters, some lyrical, but her prison writings are mainly political and strategic. Alexandra Kollontai, Bolshevik and socialist-feminist, wrote in her diaries how the Soviet system had failed to develop communist humanism. Her diaries provide insights into her survival and the political changes of her time.
We discussed how activists couldn’t keep a journal. It is not safe. Unless you are looking back, that is, a memoir. Lots of history is recorded in memoirs. We also talked about autobiographical fiction written by women.
Some of the women who worked at Bletchley Park told stories about their experiences through diaries, books, and interviews. Political women wrote their memoirs, like Barbara Castle, Fighting All the Way, who used her diaries to produce her memoirs. She kept the Barbara Castle Cabinet Diaries typed by herself from her notes covering January 1965 – 1971 and January 1974 – April 1976. Mo Mowlem and Betty Boothroyd were other politicians mentioned.
Nella Last was another example from the past, she wrote about her life as a 49-year-old housewife at the outbreak of the Second World War for a project called Mass Observation. Her diary gave her the courage to reveal the truth about her marriage and her fears for her son who was in the army. Victoria Wood, the late comedian, wrote a script that brought Last’s diary to the TV screen.
Some of us knew about the Mass Observation study, which was about capturing everyday life in the UK. It began in 1937 and collected hundreds of World War Two diaries. https://massobs.org.uk/about-mass-observation/
Personal diaries or journals: Hilary shared that she had kept a diary when she visited the Soviet Union in the 1960s. She kept notes of her experience.
Political diaries: Diary of Mary Seacole. Mary Seacole, nursing soldiers injured on the battlefields of the Crimean War (1853-56),
Testament of Youth. Vera Brittain wroteabout the First World War.
Fighting Fit is the title of Chanie Rosenberg’s memoir. Chanie was an activist and also in the OFN. Ellen Wilkinson, MP, wrote about the Jarrow March in the 1930s. Anne Scargill and Betty Cook wrote Anne and Betty: United By The Struggle; and Betty Cook wrote Women Against Pit Closures diaries, 1986; Jean McCrindle: the Women Against Pit Closure movement grew out of the network of local support groups set up by women in the mining communities, documents are preserved in various archives. May Hobbswrote about her childhood, life in Hoxton, her campaigning in strikes and unionisation and her role in the Night Cleaners campaign in the 1970s in Born to Struggle.
Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, wrote A Russian Diary, which is a final account of her life, corruption and death. This is the book she completed when she was murdered in a contract killing in Moscow, 2006.
Writing under a male name: Some women writers took a male nom de plume in order to get their work published, like George Elliot. The Bronte sisters wrote under men’s names to get published. J.K. Rowling uses the male name of Robert Galbraith to publish her Strike novels.
Who gets to keep a diary or journal? Do you have to be settled? You have to be literate, have the time and space. Whose voices are missing? Working class women, women from repressive countries. Government funding cuts in adult education and Workers Education Association mean that working class women have had fewer opportunities to access education. We spoke about how social media influencers take up the reading time of young adults and undermine their critical thinking skills.
We discussed Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit and Bea Campbell’s latest book, Planet Patriarchy. We brainstormed a list of women writers of diaries: Audre Lorde, Helen Gordon, Susan Sontag, Anais Nin, Joan Didion, Patricia Highsmith, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir.
HOWL has established a website where feminists involved in the women’s movement can write about their experiences. The group is appealing for more women to upload their writing.
The artist Käthe Kollwitz told her stories of war through her art.
Woman with Dead Child, Käthe Kollwitz Museum
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