If you write a daily (or occasional) journal...

If the author could be traced and felt happy having them published I feel that would be acceptable.
However, if the author is deceased I feel it would be an infringement of their privacy to print them.
On the other hand, if they threw them in a skip there was always the possibility of them being found - unless this was done by a family member.
I'm pretty sure if I found them in a deceased relatives home I would read them before disposing of them though.
I've occasionally written my thoughts down, I'd hate to think of anyone finding them if I died unexpectedly.

It's a difficult one Mollie.
Where would biographers be without the diaries that people wrote, and the letters they kept.
My favourite writer is Barbara Pym, who did keep a diary, but the biography of her is incomplete because she destroyed all her diaries for 1943 when she had a disastrous love affair with Gordon Glover.
I write a blog when we are travelling, but it doesn't reveal my innermost thoughts in some subjects, because I write it primarily to be read by family and friends, as well as for myself. That's rather different from
a private journal.

I think the journals appeared to cover a whole life and because they were in a skip it's possible someone was clearing out a deceased person's effects. That's the suggestion as I read it and there's no name or 'return to...'

Personally I'd hate my journals to be read by anyone I knew, before or after I die, but I do enjoy reading other people's so I'm really a hypocrite, I know. We'd never have Ann Frank's diary or the Paston Papers or Nelly Last's war diaries if everyone felt like me. OH knows my feelings and will destroy any journals I leave behind but only after I promised to write a diary he could read, but I wonder what other journal writers plan to do?

I have kept a daily journal for almost 60 years and I want mine to go to the Sussex University social archive in case anyone in years to come wants to research the life of an ordinary girl/woman in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The reason I started keeping this record of my life was reading Samuel Pepys' diaries. I was fascinated with the domestic details and minutiae of everyday life which is what real history is about for me. I have no interest in wars and alliances and conferences but I love to know what they had for lunch!

I have kept a diary for most of my adult life and it is definitely for my eyes only. Enough said!

I haven't kept a journal since I married 36 years ago and this thread got me thinking...where are my old diaries of my teenage years...panic!!! Guess they may be somewhere in my attic. I will most definitely have to find them and destroy them as I would hate to think of someone reading them after I'm gone.

What I do have is my great grandfathers police journals. He was a policeman in Renfrewshire from 1890-1925 and these journals make interesting reading especially the journal covering the period Sept 1893-1894 when he was bitten by a rabid stray dog when out on night patrol and his subsequent travels to the Louis Pasteur clinic in Paris for treatment. He describes in detail the treatment at the Pasteur Institute and how different life was in Paris compared to his semi-rural life in Scotland and all the interesting adventures along the way.

He found the writer of the diaries and she was happy for him to use them. I read a letter criticising him, saying it was akin to voyeurism and that he was exploiting someone who seems to have some emotional/mental health issues.

I still have a diary from when I was 12 years old. That's the only one left from childhood - I don't know what I did with the others. I have about 25-30 diaries that I have written since then. I don't think anybody would bother publishing them because they aren't very interesting. I don't know why I wrote - and continue to write - such boring and inconsequential accounts about mundane stuff. I do try and put a smattering of news/current affairs in but I wish I'd put more of my thoughts down, rather than when I went shopping and what I made for lunch!

Oh, I LOVED that story! I also love your approach, Gaga. I do a little blog about the town I live in - I'm not a local, and seem to see the place with different eyes. It's extraordinarily hard to find everyday stories from the town's past, and they'd add so much to the physical reminders.

Many decades ago, I helped with a Black Country language archive. We recorded old people talking about their lives in their own dialect: these had to be 'translated' for modern ears, and most of the true dialects have died out. While I was at school, there were people still speaking Middle English (as dialect) in the Midlands and Yorkshire. It's regrettable that much of our culture disappears under our noses, unremarked.

Like you, mollie, I've systematically destroyed my journals every ten years or so. While mine are mostly outpourings of random thoughts & feelings, I'm sometimes sorry I can't read my old self now. And, of course, there would have been plenty of incidental detail which is now lost.

That's funny, Eloethan - you wish you wrote more of your thoughts, and I wish I wrote more mundane detail! We'd make a good diary team (if we lived the same life)

I've kept a diary since I was 14. My original plan was to let me daughter have them when I'm gone. As son is dyslexic and also don't want DIL reading them!! There is such a lot of family history in there (I'm often asked to look up something from them) but on reading this I am wondering if I really want even DD reading them as some personal stuff in there. What to do??? ?

I keep a diary and have asked that if I die before my DH he destroys them without reading them. If he dies before me I will burn them whilst I am still able to - not for anyone's eyes but mine .

What about a bit of "redaction" chloe, it's quite the thing these days!

I've kept a journal for the last 4 years its helped get to grip's with my illness and my anger over it also helped prove DH wrong( he thinks he has a great memory lol) about things that have happened.
They all know that they are not to be read but burnt ( something ceremonial on the beach when they scatter my ashes). These are my private thoughts and feelings and no doubt I would upset somebody if they read them

I wish I had kept a journal more regularly but there was so much I wanted to write and then it became too much to keep it going so I stopped.
MIL kept a note of all her purchases and it was fascinating to see the costs and how that increased over the years. DH's brothers threw everything away when their parents died which was a real pity since they would not have minded a bit what was read after they died any more than they did when they were alive!

I can't see any issue about stuff being read after you have died unless it is inflammatory - but then you can't be sued if you are dead! Now there is a tempting thought!

I have kept a diary since the late 50's. All my school days, first few years working in London (what fun we had in London in the 60's!), early married life and children growing up.
I've recently re-read them and then destroyed every single one of them. There are some things that I really didn't want my family to read and some things that I'm not very proud of doing , to be honest - I was surprised at how awful I was during my late teens. I still have an online diary that I started a few years back and I will shortly be deleting that too.

I've recently read that book. DANGER - SPOILER! It was interesting in itself - the author assumes the diary writer is a 'he' and that 'he' is dead but then discovers 'he' is a 'she' and is still alive. 'She' turns out to have led a disappointing life but is happy to have her diaries published.

I have years and years of diaries that my father wrote. I've read them all and they are very entertaining but then someone said perhaps I should not have read them but destroyed them. I write a diary myself but these days it is are mainly factual. I do have some from years ago that are less factual and I think I will destroy them soon.

DH has kept a diary for some years now. He doesn't write anything of any great moment in it - just a rather mundane record of what we have been doing from day to day. I have said things like "why on earth do you want to remember that?" only for it to be demonstrated that 'that' came to be relevant at some later date! I used to keep a diary before we got married - never had time to keep it up after that. DS writes a journal because, like sweetcakes, it is helping him with a condition he is struggling with at the moment.

I was diagnosed with a terminal disease a couple of years ago.
I read through over 40 years worth of diaries then shredded them one by one.
Then they told me I wasn't going to die after all.
Needless to say I was delighted but a bit miffed about the loss of my diaries but I did relive some very happy moments (and some sad ones too, of course).

phizz - that's a really happy story!

Goodness, phizz! I'm relieved you're still with us. Are you keeping a journal now? I'd be willing to bet that a record of your feelings around that time would make powerful reading.

Not a proper diary but have kept notes of family holidays since 1967. Our first camping holiday in France- can you imagine we flew with our car to Brittany! Great way to travel with 2 little tots! Details of how much food cost,what daughter thought about loos(holes in floor!) Playing on the beach, seems like yesterday,they may find them interesting one day.

I would love to write a journal or even an Autobiography, but if I was totally honest about all my feelings and actions, I know I would hurt a lot of people and deeply hurt my family, so it's best kept in my head and in my heart...

I have kept a daily diary for almost the last 25 years. Don't know what made me start but it has become automatic to write it every day. Has come in very useful over the years when dates and events have been questioned. However, it is definitely for my eyes only as problems and worries are recorded. DH has instructions to destroy unread if I go on first, and I would do it myself if I was left behind.

I have kept a journal on and off since being a teenager but have only saved some from the mid eighties onwards. I do worry about what I write and who will read it. I think someone suggested sending theirs to a social archive? That has given me an idea. I read Virginia Woolfs diaires about 15 years ago - I prefer them to her fiction, they are marvellous- so that kept me going.