Faber snaps up Shaun Usher’s book about diaries and why they matter

Faber has inked a book about diaries and why they matter from Letters of Note founder Shaun Usher. 

Hannah Knowles acquired world rights to all languages in Diaries of Note from Caroline Michel at PFD, and Faber will publish the book in autumn 2025.

The book will look at the "unvarnished truths, our most poignant hopes, hidden desires and our deepest fears" which people all over the world throughout history have put into diaries.It will collect 366 of the most noteworthy diary entries ever written, one for each day of the leap year, each authored by a different individual.

The diaries include: world leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Theodore Roosevelt and Emperor Uda; artists and writers such as Frida Kahlo, Seamus Heaney, David Sedaris and Shirley Jackson; and film stars and musical icons..."as well as people whose lives were never illuminated by fame, yet their diaries reveal them to have been extraordinary".

Usher is the founder of Letters of Note, the popular online archive of correspondence, and author of a Canongate-published bestselling book of the same name. His archive is also part of the inspiration behind the Letters Live events stream.

Usher said: "For many years I have dreamt of the Diaries of Note book – an intimate yet wide-ranging collection that arranges the deepest, most personal musings of individuals from all walks of life across a single year. That this dream is now becoming a reality."

Knowles added: "Getting to join Shaun on his new adventure into the private reaches of the human mind is an absolute treat. His curiosity and passion for the way we humans express ourselves in the most personal written forms is completely contagious and Diaries feels like the natural apotheosis of his curatorial work."