Henri Frédéric Amiel

Born in Geneva in 1821, Henri Frédéric Amiel was a Swiss writer, poet, critic, and professor. He came from a Huguenot family and was orphaned young, then went on to travel widely and study in Berlin, where he immersed himself in German thought.

Back in Geneva, he taught aesthetics and later philosophy at the university. During his lifetime he published relatively little that made a lasting mark, but he kept an extensive private diary for decades.

That diary, published after his death in 1881 as Journal intime, became the work for which he is best remembered. Readers have long valued it for its honesty, psychological depth, and careful record of a mind constantly testing its own beliefs, hopes, and doubts.