Hundreds of Britons Volunteered for a Diary Project in 1937

On the eve of the war that would cost the lives of more than one million British military personnel, change the path of the empire, and reshape the skylines of cities from London to Glasgow, people across the U.K. opened up their diaries and sat down to write.

Founded in January 1937 as an “anthropology of ourselves,” the project known as Mass Observation was meant to record the mundane details of British life across every level of class and location.