SOURCE: Pudaloff, Ross. “‘A Certain Amount of Excellent English’: The Secret Diaries of William Byrd.” Southern Literary Journal 15, no. 1 (fall 1982): 101-19.

In the following essay, Pudaloff explores Byrd's secret diaries and contrasts the persona revealed in those works with that presented in his public writings.

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Since the earliest of the extant secret diaries of William Byrd dates from 1709 and the latest from 1741, we can assume that he must have possessed good reasons to keep these records of his life so rigorously for himself. Yet the use of a shorthand code seems, if not unnecessary, at the least excessive in light of the...