George Gissing 
Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft 

First published in 1903 and hugely popular at the time, ‘The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft’ by George Gissing is structured as a series of diary entries. The diary keeper is the fictional former writer Henry Ryecroft, now in his fifties. An unexpected inheritance has allowed him to enjoy a slow, solitary life in Devon, where he muses about art, nature, and society through his diary. Although this is a work of fiction, there are clear parallels between the narrator’s life and Gissing’s own life, which has led many commenters to view it as semi-autobiographical.-