A day in the Archives

It was almost surreal. After months spent thinking about seeing and studying Emily's diary, I was suddenly sitting at a table in the library of the State Historical Society of Iowa with a sheet of paper to sign, essentially "checking out"  the three boxes of Emily's diary materials sitting in front of me, waiting for me to open them. I asked my sister to take my picture as I signed, and then I opened the first box. Within minutes, I had opened them all and found the diaries written by Emily's own hand (the first five volumes were recopied--BY HAND--by Emily's daughter Sarah in an effort to preserve them), and sat down to read. I spent the next 7 hours (with my long-suffering sister by my side) reading, making notes, and taking hundreds of pictures of entries that I had never read in their entirety. It was really amazing.

The wonderful people in the archives were so enthusiastic about my project, and took me upstairs to see items that had been donated by the descendants of the family left behind when Emily moved to Iowa from Michigan. We saw the most unusual thing I'd ever seen-- a beautiful "hair flower" family tree sculptural thing (seriously, I'm not sure what to call it, but it was exquisite!) that she had made from human hair (taken from family hairbrushes for the most part. Apparently this was a thing that people did, so that your family tree would contain not only all of your genealogical information, but the DNA of your relatives as well (although I'm not sure they knew that then). I also discovered that Emily was a prolific poet. There are folders full of her poems in the boxes!

Tomorrow morning I'll get my first look at the diary materials that Emily wrote first--before she began her revisions during recopying (and definitely before her daughter took over the revisions/ recopying). Apparently she made notes on backs of envelopes and scraps of papers before she wrote them down for posterity. She was editing from the beginning.

Speaking of editing, I'm making a few plots changes to my book already. I can't imagine the sort of changes awaiting once I've seen the rest of the diary-- and Emily's house! Iowa has inspired me, and I can't wait to get back to work on the writing!