On June 12, 1942 a thirteen-year-old named Anne Frank received a red-and-white checkered diary. Seventy-three years later, this diary is still one of the most widely read primary source accounts of life during the Holocaust. Yet what has made her The Diary of a Young Girl a classroom classic is also Anne's voice, her treatment of the diary as a dear companion. "I hope I will be able to confide everything to you," she wrote on the first page, and for many readers, it's an incredibly charming invitation to "listen" to the text like a friend. 

Published diaries implode the line between public and private life, allowing us into the interstice where we can seemingly overhear the author, even as part of the thrill derives from the sense that the author might not normally divulge such information. At some point, we might identify with the diary itself, becoming the unchosen confidant. It's nearly a paradoxical pleasure; the reader gains access to the no longer private life of the author, all the while enjoying the timbre of the whispered secret.

As we remember Anne Frank, we're also thinking about some of our other favorite published diaries. Here are a few author diaries we love. Tell us which ones you like, and share the authors you wish would publish theirs.

Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 by Susan Sontag
Sneak Peek: "Does my 'intelligence' need frequent rejuvenation at the springs of other's dissatisfaction and die without it?" August 19, 1948

The Journals of John Cheever by John Cheever
Sneak Peek: "As I approach my fortieth birthday without having accomplished any one of the things I intended to accomplish—without ever having achieved the deep creativity that I have worked toward for all this time—I feel that I take a minor, an obscure, a dim position that is not my destiny but that is my fault, as if I had lacked, somewhere along the line the wit and courage to contain myself competently within the shapes at hand." 1952

The Journals of Louisa May Alcott by Louisa May Alcott
Sneak Peek: "The principle event of the winter is the appearance of my book 'Flower Fables.' An edition of sixteen hundred. It has sold very well and people seem to like it. I feel quite proud that the little tales that I wrote for Ellen E when I was sixteen should now bring money and fame." January 1, 1855

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
Sneak Peek: "I cannot ignore this murderous self: it is there. I smell it and feel it, but I will not give it my name. I shall shame it. When it says: you shall not sleep, you cannot teach, I shall go on anyway, knocking its nose in. It's biggest weapon is and has been the image of myself as a perfect success: in writing, teaching, and living. As soon as I sniff non-success in the form of rejections, puzzled faces in class when I'm blurring a point, or a cold horror in personal relationships, I accuse myself of being a hypocrite, posing as better than I am, and being, at bottom lousy." October 1, 1957

Diaries 1910-1923  by Franz Kafka
Sneak Peek: "Finally, after five months of my life during which I could write nothing that would have satisfied me, and for which no power will compensate me, though all were under obligation to do so, it occurs to me to talk to myself again. Whenever I really questioned myself, there was always a response forthcoming, there was always something within me to catch fire, in this heap of straw that I have been for five months and whose fate, it seems, is to be set afire during the summer and consumed more quickly than the onlooker can blink his eyes." 1910

The Diary of Virginia Woolf 1920-1924 by Virginia Woolf
Sneak Peek: "Human beings have figure less than the red berries, the suns & moon risings." January 7, 1920

Notebooks, 1935-1951 by Albert Camus
Sneak Peek: "A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession, and I must bear witness. When I see things clearly, I have only one thing to say. It is in this life of poverty, among these vain or humble people, that I have most certainly touched what I feel is the true meaning of life. Works of art will never provide this and art is not everything for me. Let it at least be a means." May 1935