Reading an antique diary is probably the truest way to understand what life was like in a different era. You can still get your hands on a 19th century diary for a reasonable price depending upon the author. Without bells and whistles and movie stars added, all you read is the thoughts, feelings and daily activities of a person who lived long before you were ever even imagined. Antique diaries and journals tell tales first hand that modern movies can only aspire to recreate with any level of authenticity.
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 Greens Diary Almanac GC Green laboratories 1885 86 Victorian agriculture  US $9.99 |  1891 Handwritten Diary SS Bismarck Sails NY Norway Arctic Ocean Laplander Camp US $9.99 |
 Antique 1871 Day To Day Diary Ellen Wheeler Norwich NY US $9.99 |  FOUR DIARIES YOUNG WOMAN FROM WALLACE NY 1877 83 US $10.49 |
 1840s Record Diary of Lumber Cut Sawed and Sold US $15.00 |  1883 1884 Greens Diary Almanac Medical cures calendar stories Great Artwork US $15.00 |
| Vintage Ephemera |
Some of the most compelling writing you will ever read can be found within the pages of antique diaries. These old collections are where the true experience of every day life was captured and recorded without any editing or cleaning up for the sake of making things more palatable to modern readers. I have never found a diary dating back past the turn of the last century myself. I have however purchased some antique diaries from the period between 1910 and 1920 and I can tell you that they described what sounds, at times, like a completely different world. What is interesting to me though is the fact that even though things were much different as far as every day events and news were concerned, the day to day happenings sound remarkably similar to what one might focus on and write about today. The minutia of the day is now very interesting to us because we long to learn what life was really like that long ago. It can make us wonder how different things will be one hundred years from now. Will people look back at us in the year 2110 and wonder how we dealt with the "primitive" conditions of today? It makes for an interesting thought and it gives a new perspective to reading those old 19th century diaries and other vintage ephemera.
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