The Diary and the Commonplace Book: Self-Inscription in The Note Books of a Woman Alone

The Note Books of a Woman Alone (1935), the posthumously published notebooks of an impoverished London clerk, provokes reconsideration of what counts as an individual voice. More than half the text is comprised of quotations and extracts; Evelyn Wilson’s textual collecting, however, was deeply enmeshed with her diary writing. Blurring transcription and expression, her practice of self-inscription lays bare the intersubjective nature of self-definition and the composite nature of any textual voice.