Library of secrets
John Lichfield in Paris

Everyone’s life is a novel, which has not yet been written. Or in some In a small town in eastern France, there is a library, or archive, of intimate secrets: a collection of 2,500 unpublished and mostly unpublishable autobiographies, diaries, scrapbooks, bundles of letters and collections of emails dating from the early 19th century to last month.

"There are as many diarists as there are amateur pianists. They just make less noise," says Michel Vannet, custodian of the archive at AmbErieu-en-Bugey, near Lyons.

The man who co-founded the association, which snaps up these previously unconsidered literary treasures, Philippe Lejeune, puts it another way.

"There are no limits to literature," he says, "it can turn up anywhere." Similar archives of unpublished "autobiography" exist in other countries, including Britain (at the University of Sussex). There is a library, in Burlington, Vermont, which offers a home to unpublished books of all kinds.

What makes the AmbErieu archive unique is that it is not just an archive. It is also a kind of intimate "book club". Everything received is read by volunteers and a one-page "review" published in the association’s journal.

However, contributors can ask for their secrets to be hidden until their death or locked away until an agreed date in a "cupboard of secrets".

Inclusion in the AmbErieu archive guarantees simply that their writings, and their life’s story, will not die.
The closed archive contains a large, brown envelope, which was deposited recently by an old woman with failing eyesight. In a covering letter, she wrote: "I don’t want you to read my diary because it will not contribute to public understanding. It is only a banal story of adultery ... Until now I have destroyed all my writings ... I felt the death of my words like a series of small suicides."

The contents of the "open" archive range from a single, autobiographical poem, written in alexandrines, to a diary consisting of 65 200-page notebooks, delivered in a trunk. There are moving autobiographies of wartime, banal descriptions of the working life of postmen or plumbers, surreal scrapbooks of personal mementoes and a small sack of rose petals grown in the compost of a burned diary of "personal suffering".

After 16 years of existence, the AmbErieu library of secrets is proving to be a goldmine for researchers. A book was released last month by the historian Anne-Claire Rebreyent, IntimitEs Amoureuses. France 1920-1975, which charts changing French attitudes to love. Mme Rebreyent researched the book entirely in five years that she spent visiting the AmbErieu archive.

Some of the material consists of diaries or letters found in attics or antique shops. The authors or their children sent in about 80 per cent. Some "living" diarists are permitted to send an update every year.

The archive is the work of the Association pour L’Autobiographie et le Patrimoine Autobiographique (APA), founded in 1992 by Philippe Lejeune and Chantal Chaveyriat-Dumoulin, M. Lejeune is France’s best-known academic specialist on autobiography, sometimes known as the "pope of autobiography". Much of what is preserved at AmbErieu would fail the usual tests of literary merit or publishability, he says. But the texts have other qualities — of authenticity, of freshness, of originality of voice — which are not always found in officially recognised literature.

No attempt is made to try to identify publishable work. Nothing is refused.

The 800 members of the association, who pay A38 (pounds sterling 34) a year, are split into half a dozen study groups. Each new entry to the archive is taken on by one reader, who writes a review published in the association’s twice-year GardE-Memoire or memory safe. This acts as a kind of index.

Writings that receive glowing reviews are passed around and discussed. Some — the "best-sellers" — end up being read by everyone in the association (many of whom are diarists themselves).

— By arrangement with The Independent

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