The budding naturalist W. N. P. Barbellion begins keeping a journal at the age of thirteen. Curious, enthusiastic, and clever, he lives a happy life punctuated by periods of health problems. As he grows up, he earns recognition as a promising naturalist, but his health scares become more frequent and more severe. He’s eventually diagnosed with a fatal, unnamed illness, which today we know to be multiple sclerosis.

These journals of a dying man capture his frustration at a life of promise being cut short—but they also contain many odes to a life well-lived. His philosophical musings on death, love, beauty, and nature paint a picture of a sensitive young man who managed to fit a full life into his short years.

Barbellion is in reality a pen name for Bruce Frederick Cummings, who died two years after the publication of these journals. When this book was published, his real identity was unknown, and early reviewers thought it to be a work of fiction penned by H. G. Wells , who wrote the introduction to the first edition.

Though not widely read today, it earned immediate praise and generated strong sales. In the years since it has garnered much additional critical praise, with one more recent reviewer comparing it to the diaries of Franz Kafka , and another calling it simply “the greatest diary a man has written.”