Reading the diaries of well-known writers and public figures such as Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, Henry Crabb Robinson, George Eliot, George Gissing, John Ruskin, Edith Simcox and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Anne-Marie Millim locates the diary at the intersection of the public and private spheres. Diaristic writing, Millim argues, played a crucial role in these writers’ construction of authorship and in the management of their emotions for the purposes of perfecting their observational and critical skills.