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

自我技术：加拿大的商业袖珍日记，c。

• 批准号: NE/T014024/1
• 负责人: Mark Jenner
• 金额: $ 1.24万
• 依托单位: University of York
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FT014024%2F1
• 关键词: Technologies; Self; commercial; pocket; diary

AHRC : Holly Day : AH/L503848/1The 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 which brings together an eclectic mix of print and manuscript text, the pocket diary is perceived to have little literary value and often falls through the net of our historical enquiries. Consequently, pocket diaries have received no critical attention in Canada despite the prevalence of pocket diaries in Canadian archives and libraries. However, understanding the evolution of the diary form is crucial both for our knowledge of the development of the early print trade and our understanding of how Canadians experienced and interpreted the world around them during a period of great media shift and social change. Drawing on neglected archival sources at major Canadian libraries and archives such as the Thomas Fisher Library and Library and Archives Canada (LAC), I will build on my current PhD research into British pocket diaries to contribute a transatlantic perspective to the development of this genre. My project will research the importation and production of pocket diaries in Ontario in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, with a focus on the development of the first Canadian brand of commercial diary, the Canadian Pocket Diary, produced by the Brown Brothers in Toronto. 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 will include a case study of the collection of pocket diaries kept by Sir Sandford Fleming (1827-1915), inventor of a worldwide standard time, throughout his life. 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 popularisation of the diary form. Ultimately, it will uncover the ways in which pocket diaries acted as a technology of the self, helping people to track, manage and record their everyday lives. The questions we ask of historical diaries can, in turn, be used to interrogate our current assumptions in the modern world, helping us to historicise and contextualise new forms of writing about the self.

AHRC：Holly Day：AH/L503848/1 在过去的两个半世纪里，商业袖珍日记一直是人们记录生活的最常见方式之一。然而，作为一种将印刷品和手稿文本混合在一起的混合体裁，袖珍日记被认为没有什么文学价值，并且经常落入我们的历史调查之网。因此，尽管袖珍日记在加拿大档案馆和图书馆很普遍，但袖珍日记在加拿大并没有受到严格的关注。然而，了解日记形式的演变对于我们了解早期印刷贸易的发展以及了解加拿大人在媒体巨变和社会变革时期如何体验和解释周围的世界都至关重要。我将借鉴加拿大主要图书馆和档案馆（例如托马斯·费希尔图书馆和加拿大图书馆档案馆（LAC））被忽视的档案资源，以我目前对英国袖珍日记的博士研究为基础，为这一流派的发展提供跨大西洋的视角。我的项目将研究十八世纪末和十九世纪安大略省袖珍日记的进口和生产情况，重点是加拿大第一个商业日记品牌——加拿大袖珍日记的开发，该品牌由多伦多布朗兄弟生产。我还将对该类型的个人用户进行案例研究，以研究袖珍日记如何帮助塑造他们的自我记录实践。这将包括对世界标准时间的发明者桑福德·弗莱明爵士（Sandford Fleming，1827-1915）一生保存的袖珍日记集的案例研究。这项研究将揭示袖珍日记在印刷贸易的增长、印刷中新兴国家身份的创造以及日记形式的普及中所发挥的作用。最终，它将揭示袖珍日记作为自我技术的作用，帮助人们跟踪、管理和记录他们的日常生活。我们对历史日记提出的问题反过来可以用来质疑我们当前对现代世界的假设，帮助我们将有关自我的新写作形式历史化和语境化。