By Hayley Maitland
“The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing a future can be, I think,” wrote Virginia Woolf upon beginning her first long-term diary, in 1915. Within a few years, she would become a Vogue contributor, penning reviews and essays for the magazine’s pages. At the height of the First World War, however, she was concerned with empty shelves in her local Richmond grocer, Zeppelin raids and the constant stream of “very bad news in the newspapers”.
Sitting down each evening before dinner to commune with her journal proved a tonic for Woolf – a way of processing history as she lived through it. A century later, the same impulse is being shared by a new generation of diarists, keen to take up the pen as reality shifts around them. Julia Jeuvell, founder of cult London stationer Choosing Keeping, sees “analogue” diary-keeping as a vital antidote to stress. “Being in front of a screen and passively consuming information can be draining – whereas writing or sketching on paper is the opposite. It’s an opportunity to be creative and recharge,” she explains, noting, too, the surge in demand for her handmade notebooks, which are bound in vintage Italian and Japanese papers.
Take Manhattan-based artist Pamela Sztybel, who, after decades of painting landscapes, has pivoted to home-made visual diary-making under quarantine, establishing a devoted Instagram following thanks to her headline-inspired illustrations of everything from a Bronx Zoo tiger’s Covid-19 diagnosis to the Queen’s national address at Windsor Castle. “I started the project in order to have some sort of account of this historical transformation in real time,” Sztybel explains of her creations. “I hope that my little news service might be a useful record in the future – but it’s also a means of connecting with others during this strange period.”
Professionals are by no means alone. “The notion of art as therapy is stronger than ever – both to record what’s going on around us and, conversely, to help us escape from it for a little while,” says Georgia Spray, the founder of online gallery Partnership Editions, which represents some of London’s brightest young talent. Just after lockdown began, she worked with key artists to record popular tutorials devoted to capturing the world from self-isolation. Included in their number? Printmaker Rose Electra Harris’s guide to joyful, Matisse-inflected renderings of one’s home, and botanical artist Julianna Byrne’s gratitude-inspiring lessons on sketching foraged plants and wild flowers.
Then, of course, there are the everyday writers, documenting the minutiae of daily life, as events seem to both crunch and widen. “A diary is really the purest form of expression – a way of quietly finding meaning in our experiences and processing trauma,” says Tamsin Calidas, the author of this summer’s buzziest memoir, I Am an Island, about her life on a remote croft in the Outer Hebrides. “I carry a pencil and jotter with me wherever I go to record my impressions of the world around me. Writing down our thoughts and emotions is a way of shining some light into the darkness around us – and, ultimately, finding our way through it.”
