Emily Shore

Who was Emily Shore?

Margaret Emily Shore was a young English woman who kept a journal from the age of eleven until her death from consumption at the age of nineteen. Extracts of her journal were published by her sisters Louisa and Arabella in 1891. A second edition was published in 1898.

Emily Shore moved to Funchal, Madeira, with her family at the end of her life in search of a healthier climate. She died there in 1839. Her final journal is an amazingly descriptive account of life in Funchal.

Barbara Gates and the University of Virginia Press have digitized Emily Shore's diaries to show how her sisters censored her original thoughts, what Emily Shore herself censored in her diary, and what was actually cut out of the original diary.

Alternative country band The Handsome Family recorded a song based on the diaries, "Emily Shore 1819-1839", on their 1996 album Milk and Scissors.