A Young Girl's Diary

This detailed and expressive diary appeared in 1915, quickly causing an uproar in its readership due to the intimacy of its content, and the young age to which this intimacy was attached. The anonymous author shocked and stirred the public with the candid perspectives, uncensored emotions and raw behaviors that chart her passage from childhood through puberty. First brought to mainstream attention by psychologist Sigmund Freud, the book is still regarded as a fascinating and controversial chronicle of one girl’s chrysalis. Equally as compelling as the content is the mystery of the manuscript’s origin. To this day, the authorship of the book remains under question. While the editor and ‘discoverer’ of the diary, Hermine Von Hug-Hellmuth, has testified to its authenticity, many scholars believe that it was Hug-Hellmuth and her sister who actually penned the diary in a rather fanatical attempt to garner widespread support of Freud’s psychoanalytic theories.