ABSTRACT
Both William Stevenson, EG’s father, and her brother John encouraged her to keep a diary at different points in her childhood (see Sharps, p. 17, n. 1). For a young woman to whom writing was such an instinctive activity it is interesting that this diary, dedicated to her infant daughter Marianne, and written from March 1835, when Marianne was aged six months, to October 1838, when she had reached the age of four, is the only extant example of life-writing. There is no suggestion that she kept a journal or diary at other times in her life. The diary, as she makes clear at the beginning, is to be given to Marianne at some later time, should her mother not survive to do this herself.
