Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-216) and index.
Diary and letter strategies past and present -- Riddles and relics: critical correspondence in A.S. Byatt's Possession: a romance and the biographer's tale -- Spectral diarists: Sarah Waters's Affinity and Melissa Pritchard's Selene of the spirits -- A deviant device: diary dissembling in Margaret Atwood's Alias grace -- Lewis Carroll and the curious theatre of modernity: epistolary pursuit in Katie Roiphe's Still she haunts me -- Dissident diarists: Mick Jackson's The underground man andMichael Faber's The crimson petal and the white -- Postscript: treasures and pleasures