From Childhood to Girlhood

Marie Bashkirtseff's diary was first published in 1887, and was only the second diary by a woman published in France till that date. It was an immediate success. British Prime Minister William Gladstone referred to her diary as 'a book without a parallel', and another early admirer was George Bernard Shaw. Her diary was cited as an inspiration by the American writer Mary MacLane, whose own shockingly confessional diary was written a bare generation later, and it was mentioned as a model by later writers who became known for their diaries, including Pierre Louÿs, Katherine Mansfield, and Anais Nin. Bashkirtseff's diary has been called 'a strikingly modern psychological self-portrait of a young, gifted mind,' and her urgent prose, which occasionally breaks out into dialogue, remains extremely readable. She was multilingual and despite her self-involvement, was a keen observer with an acute ear for hypocrisy, so that her diary also offers a near-novelistic account of the late nineteenth century European bourgeoisie. A consistent theme throughout her journal is her deep desire to achieve fame, inflected by her increasing fear that her intermittent illnesses might turn out to be tuberculosis.

Marie Bashkirtseff (1858-1884) was a Ukrainian-French diarist, painter, and sculptor, who was born in the Russian Empire. Bashkirtseff lived and worked in Paris for many years, and died at age 25. Educated privately and with early musical talent, she lost her chance at a career as a singer when illness destroyed her voice. She then determined to become an artist, and she studied painting in France at the Robert-Fleury studio and at the Académie Julian.