Exhibition: Hand writing history: 200 years of personal diaries

For the past 40 years artist Dylan Jonas Stone has been collecting personal diaries and his unique collection now numbers over 200 diaries, acquired at flea markets, car boot sales and online, as well as other printed and manuscript ephemera.

The diaries range in date from the first decade of the 19th century to the present day and their writers lived in Britain, continental Europe and North and South America. Together these diaries document the lives of ordinary people, their joys and sorrows, the humdrum occurrences of daily existence and those occasions when global events intervened to change those lives for better or worse. Personal witnesses to social history, the diaries also ask questions about the human wish to document our lives.

This exhibition has previously been shown at venues in New York, Orkney and Norfolk, and each time Stone has worked with the hosting institution to adapt the content to its setting.

At King’s they will complement the Dylan Jonas Stone collection with selected items, including diaries, from their special collections and archives to take the visitor on a journey through 200 years of individual human lives.