The Swiss artist Dieter Roth was a dedicated keeper of journals – both analog and digital. In the spring of 2013, his personal written and video diaries were displayed at the Camden Arts Centre in London, England, as part of a...
We often highlight how wonderful journals can be for holding your private thoughts – places where you can be completely honest about how you’re feeling about your life and the people in it. We should mention, though, that if you...
In the summer of 1904, Empress Alexandra (“Alix”) of Russia gave birth to a baby boy. Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich (known as Alexei) was the youngest child and only son of Alix and Emperor Nicholas II, and heir apparent to the...
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is just around the corner (January 20th), and this month is an important time to honour his hard work and achievements in the Civil Rights Movement. In an October 2013 auction Maude Ballou, a former secretary...
Beatrice Wood was an American artist and potter and the partial inspiration behind the character of Rose in James Cameron’s Titanic. From 1930 to 1934 she kept a diary chronicling her daily activities in a series of short sentences. The...
Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, was not an author opposed to getting creative when naming his characters. No surprise here – how many “Huckleberry”s do you know in real life? So when, in the spring of 1884, he put himself...
Today, if someone were to publish a collection of writings and drawings of patients suffering from mental illness, calling it On the Writing of the Insane would probably be taken pretty offensively. Published in 1870, however, George Mackenzie Brown’s literary...
I don’t know about you, but I love filling out surveys. Ever since I received my first guided journal as a young child, fill-in-the-blank activities have served as ideal jumping-off points to get my creative juices flowing. And it seems...
When Henry VIII died in 1547 at age fifty-five, the effect on England was monumental and forever changed the course of history for the western world. Lost in the cultural context, however, is the effect his death had on members...
You may know Nick Cave as the gravelly-voiced, mustachioed lead singer of The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds and Grinderman or as the bowler hat–wearing barroom balladeer in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. You may...