Memoria y Civilización (Nov 2002)
Jacques Presser's Heritage: Egodocuments in the Study of History
Abstract
In the mid-1950s, the historian Jacob Presser introduced a new word: egodocument, meant as a term to indicate autobiographies, memories, diaries, personal letters and other texts in which the author writes explicitly about his or her own affairs and feelings. The word was quickly adopted in the Dutch language, but otherwise the timing was bad. Presser's colleagues were more than ever reluctant to use such texts. From the 1980s, the new cultural history has returned to egodocuments. Among the reading public egodocuments have always remained popular, which explains the paradox of the diary of Anne Frank, widely read, but, until recently, little studied.
