Yeah, I've read Dafoe. But I haven't read Johnson or Pepys.
Research. It is so much fun.
So one of the sub-plots in my London novel is the diary of a shopgirl discovered in the collapsed part of the Tube Station shelter my protagonist is helping excavate. This is there to advance a lot of themes, but prominent among them the idea of archaeology bringing the individual story back to the broad sweep of history. And uncovering the lives of the ordinary (where history generally records the lives of kings).
And, yeah, I should have realized it: Londoners are a diary-writing, journal keeping, letter-sending breed. I've been reading up on The Blitz, particularly man-in-the-street impressions. And I've found there are so many personal accounts by people who either were or proudly called themselves ordinary, that there has grown up a whole field of critical rethinking on the genre.
The ideas that the mythology of The Blitz needs to be questioned is already out there, and has already gone full-circle at least once. Wartime censorship and government propaganda were very much interested in keeping up the idea of all of England rallying as one, class distinctions forgotten, crime put aside for the duration, chin up and a song in their hearts standing shoulder to shoulder against invasion and bearing the deprivations stoically.
Except the private diaries and un-sent letters reveal...yeah, the people really did feel that way. Although they were much more aware of a very real crime problem and class conflicts and there were some racial conflicts as well. And so the circle goes around; researchers are questioning the questioning of wartime letters.
Well, okay. So the diary isn't a big thing, not on the surface of it. No revelations to the general audience. But plenty of insights for my audience. And my protagonist. And that is sufficient.
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