you know ... i really have no idea. but i never felt that reading them was some intrusion of her privacy, and i remember once when she did a review of someone's published diary, she said:
"a good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive."
i can't remember who was the first publishers and whether her husband was ever involved. with all technicalities figured in, i don't feel uncomfortable when i read them. she isn't overbearingly personal, like perhaps someone else's "private diary" may be. her husband knew about them -- there was an instance where he wrote in hers. in any case, it isn't like kurt cobain's diaries, which he would look back on with disgust to know they were published. i do think v.w. wrote a bit for posterity more so than herself.
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also, i have a very important question for you. did virginia woolf mean for her diaries to be published?
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"a good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive."
i can't remember who was the first publishers and whether her husband was ever involved. with all technicalities figured in, i don't feel uncomfortable when i read them. she isn't overbearingly personal, like perhaps someone else's "private diary" may be. her husband knew about them -- there was an instance where he wrote in hers. in any case, it isn't like kurt cobain's diaries, which he would look back on with disgust to know they were published. i do think v.w. wrote a bit for posterity more so than herself.
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