Technologies of Self: The commercial pocket diary in Canada, c.1780-1890

The commercial pocket diary has been one of the most common ways in which people have recorded their lives over the past two and a half centuries. Yet as a hybrid genre it has often fallen through the net of our historical enquiries. My project will research the importation and production of pocket diaries in Ontario in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, focusing on the development of the first Canadian brand of commercial diary, The Canadian Pocket Diary. I will also conduct case studies of individual users of the genre to examine how the pocket diary helped to shape their self-recording practices. This research will shed light on the role pocket diaries played in the growth of the print trade, the creation of emergent national identities in print, and the ways they acted as a technology of the self, helping people to track, manage and record their everyday lives.

Faculty Supervisor:

Thomas Keymer

Student:

Partner:

University of York

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education; Entertainment and Media; Other

University:

University of Toronto

Program: