Guide to Mormon Diaries & Autobiographies Davis Bitton

BYU Studies Quarterly Volume 18 | Issue 4 Article 11 10-1-1978 Guide to Mormon Diaries & Autobiographies Davis Bitton Chad J. Flake Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq Recommended Citation Flake, Chad J. (1978) "Guide to Mormon Diaries & Autobiographies Davis Bitton," BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 18 : Iss. 4 , Article 11. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol18/iss4/11 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the All Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in BYU Studies Quarterly by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact , . Flake: <em>Guide to Mormon Diaries & Autobiographies</em> Davis Bitton BITTON DAVIS DA VIS guide to mormon diaries & autobiographies provo utah brigham young university press 1977 xi 4- 417 pp ap 2995 29.95 2995 reviewed by chad J flake curator of special collections harold B lee brary brigham young university A few years ago 1I took a class in which samuel pepys lithe noted british diarist was discussed at some length our teacher observed then that if one wanted to find a specific fact a history book could be consulted but it was in the diaries that the period came to life this is certainly true of mormonism with its seemingly inexhaustible supply of diarists mormons cormons were encouraged early in church history to keep records and this advice has been reiterated several times in various ways for example in 1890 when andrew jenson toured the various stakes admonishing people to write autobiographies and to keep current diaries but mormon studies have been hampered by the lack of good bibliographies of retrospective materials it is therefore with great anticipation that Bit tons guide to mormon diaries 6 autwe have waited for davis bittons bittens to and the published work is certainly not a disobiographies appointment some 2894 items are included which makes it to date the most significant bibliography of mormondom in format the bibliography lists the writers name the type of item journal diary or autobiography the distinction between journal and diary being explained in the preface the dates form followed by its location inholograph typescript printed etc dicated by code 1 I find the mixing of codes a bit irritating if the code uhi for the historical society is taken from the union list of libraries then why isnt the code USIC from the same list used for the church historical department or huntington library designated csmh csmi instead of huntington these are standardized codes universally accepted and easily understood following this coded location is a summary of the diary A master index accompanies the text which the user will find invaluable two areas merit criticism scope and the unevenness of the notes in the preface the author indicates the most important repositories of mormon diaries to be utah libraries ie brigham young university church historical department university of utah utah state university and utah state historical society only these are given an exhaustive treatment even here with some omissions no attempt is made to update the 1971 mary 587 Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 1978 1 BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 18, Iss. 4 [1978], Art. 11 washington bibliography of manuscripts at utah state university which could have been accomplished with very little difficulty specifically omitting the huntington library from the list of important libraries shows a lack of knowledge of how significant their holdings are I1 checked a random sample from a list of diaries at the huntington put together by the late newburn butt the man responsible for brigham young universitys typescript diary collection and found that less than twenty percent of the diaries on his list appear in bittons Bit bittens tons bibliography it should have been as easy to have these diaries searched by a student living in the area as it was to have the local institutions examined A larger aud the library of and percentage of holdings in the bancroft library add congress is included because there are available inventories to these collections the second problem the unevenness of the annotations is due partially to the fact that the raw data was collected by different researchers the problem here is that one researcher would emphasize entirely different aspects than would a second one but even more critical than unevenness are the items just plain missed for the arza adams journal the note states that he returned to nauvoo after the death of joseph smith it does not mention that he brought with him important letters from john taylor and willard richards an interesting item from the lucy hannah flake diary notes the practice among women of the nineteenth century of laying their hands on each others head to pronounce Bit tons annoblessings bless pregnancies etc not mentioned in bittons bittens tation in the journal of abraham A kimball one gets a significant view of the problems of polygamy from the mans point of view polygamy is mentioned in the note but some indication that he found it very hard as he says did his father heber C kimball should have been included also the account of his term in the utah penitentiary one of the most graphic in any diary warrants only two words while his getting drunk on the fourth of july gets six ofjuly if however the limitation of libraries involved and the use of different studies to do the research made it possible to publish the bibliography in 1977 rather than 1987 then one can live with these problems and be grateful that such an excellent bibliography is available to us now we can always await volume two while making use of the present volume 588 https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol18/iss4/11 2  (...truncated)