Anne Frank's diaries underpin everything that has become known about Anne Frank and the history of the time in hiding. After all, it is almost exclusively Anne's writings that document the course of the 25 months in hiding.

The handwritten manuscript of Anne Frank's diaries, on the basis of which Otto Frank compiled the first edition of The Secret Annex (1947), consists of a red checked booklet, two cardboard notebooks and over 200 sheets of coloured copy paper. Otto Frank bequeathed his daughter Anne's manuscripts from the period of hiding to the State of the Netherlands. Since June 2009, they have been with the Anne Frank House. Since the scholarly edition of the diaries (1986), it has been customary to refer to these manuscripts successively as diaries 1, 2 and 3 (or A-version) and the loose sheets (or B-version).^[1]

Diaries 1, 2 and 3 contain Anne Frank's original diary entries. On the loose sheets, she began rewriting and editing her original diary entries in the spring of 1944 with the intention of writing a novel entitled The Secret Annex.^[2] Together with the Storybook, the Favourite Quotes Notebook and the Blanco Monster Electro Huishoudboek (photo album), these manuscripts form Anne Frank's legacy from the hiding period in the Secret Annex.

Before going into hiding

From before the period in hiding, a number of letters written by Anne to her father and to her family in Switzerland have been preserved.^[3]

In Anne's handwriting, a number of rhymes are known in the poetry albums of her friends. Rhymes by Anne are known to exist in the albums of Juultje Ketellapper, Henny Scheerder, Mary Bos, Kitty Egyedi, Jacqueline van Maarsen, Hanneli Goslar, Ytje Swilens, Bep Groot Batavé, Dinie van Amelsbeek.^[4] Also surviving from this period is the 'Egypt Book', a cardboard notebook in which Anne (re)wrote comments on pictures cut from a Kunst in Beeld worksheet on the history of Egypt.^[5] It is assumed that this was an assignment made in the first year of secondary school. A similar piece of work was made by a former classmate of Anne Frank at the 6th Montessori school, Klaartje Musikant in the first year of HBS.

Classmates at the 6th Montessori school say Anne was writing stories back then.^[6] None of these survived, however.

In his book, Ernst Schnabel quoted Mr van Gelder, Anne's teacher in the first to fourth grades of the 6th Montessori school, as saying that Anne wrote good essays and wanted to be a writer.^[7]

Anne received the famous red checked diary for her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942.^[8] She addresses her first real diary entry on 14 June to her diary self: 'I'll begin from the moment I got you, the moment I saw you lying on the table among my other birthday presents. (I went along when you were bought, but that doesn't count).'^[9] When she went into hiding a few weeks later with her parents and sister Margot, the diary is the first thing she packed, she later writes.^[10]

Passage of time

On Wednesday 8 July 1942, Anne wrote in her diary for the first time while in hiding.^[9] She describes the day of Margot's call-up for labour and going into hiding. The second note is a reflection on her birthday exactly a month before.^[11] This first diary runs until 5 December 1942.^[12] "I may perhaps ask Bep if she could go to Perrij and see if they still sell diaries, otherwise I'll have to get a notebook soon, because my diary is getting full, too bad! I can fortunately stretch it a bit with the leaves I have stuck between them," Anne wrote on 20 October 1942.^[13] Bep Voskuijl explained that Anne asked her for a diary that could be locked with a key, but that she did not manage to find such a thing at the time.^[14] On 2 May 1943 and on 22 January 1944, Anne retrospectively added notes.^[15] She also wrote then that by now she considered it a waste of the pages left empty.^[16]

Whatever the case, the following diary or diaries are missing. The second surviving diary begins with the entry of 22 December 1943 and runs until 17 April 1943.^[17] The third diary follows this and runs from 18 April 1943 to 1 August 1944 (three days before the arrest of the people in hiding and two of their helpers).^[18] A whole year's worth of diary is therefore missing.

Joop ter Heul

From the very first page, Anne addresses her diary personally, making her diary a friend.^[19] She ends the diary entry of 21 September 1942 with: 'I would just love to correspond with somebody, so that is what I intend to do in future with my diary. I shall write it from now on in letter form, which actually comes to the same thing. Dear Jettje, (I shall simply say), My dear friend, both in the future as well as now I shall have a lot to tell you.'^[20] That evening, Anne also writes a few lines to Emmy and asks her if she has read Joop ter Heul.^[21]

From then on, Anne takes turns addressing her diary entries predominantly to different imaginary girlfriends: Jettje, Emmy, Pop, Marianne, Kitty, Conny, Pien and Loutje whom she partly borrowed from the characters in Cissy van Marxveldt's Joop ter Heul series.^[22] She writes: 'I like this way of writing in my diary much better.'^[23]

In the Joop ter Heul series, Joop wrote letters to her friend Netty, but because her father only allowed her to write once a month (on Sundays) because of her school performance, she started keeping a diary (secretly) in her sister's old notebooks.^[24]

Joop ter Heul had a club with seven girlfriends (Pop, Pien, Noortje, Loutje, Kitty and Conny) whose name was formed by the initial letters of their names: the Jopopinoloukico club. Anne Frank also had a club with Sanne, Jacqueline, Ilse and Hanneli: the Little Bear minus 2.^[9]

Anne loved Cissy van Marxveldt's books and had certainly read one volume of the Joop ter Heul series before going into hiding.^[25] According to Jacqueline van Maarsen, Anne and she read the second volume. That would mean she would have finished the first volume at that point.^[26] She read Een Zomerzotheid by Cissy van Marxveldt no less than four times.^[27] While in hiding, Johannes Kleiman took his daughter's books for her.^[27]

On 21 September 1942, the day she started the letter form in her diary, she had just finished or almost finished Joop ter Heul and had to wait for Mr Kleiman to bring the last two volumes for her the next Saturday.^[28] Two days after that, on 26 September, she had finished both of them (Joop van Dil-ter Heul and Joop en haar jongen). She liked the last volume best.^[29]

Around the same period, Anne wrote a letter in her diary to Jacqueline van Maarsen and answered an imaginary letter from Jacqueline.^[30] Anne wrote her diary letters to Jettje, Emmy, Pop, Marianne, Kitty, Conny, Pien and Loutje. She wrote to them about herself and the events in the Secret Annex. At the same time, she reacted to events and people who appeared in the Joop ter Heul books. For example, Anne asked Noortje to stay and arranged it with Noortje's mother.^[31]

Joop ter Heul talked about the distance that always existed between her and her mother.^[32] Both Anne and Joop had a mother they could not discuss things with. The last diary entry from the first red checkered diary is addressed to Kitty.^[28] From the very beginning, Anne made it clear that she preferred to write to Kitty.^[33] The real Kitty from the Joop ter Heul series is called Kitty Franken.

In diaries A2 and A3, Anne addresses entires only to Dear Kitty. Since 1943 is almost entirely missing from the A version, we do not know when Anne switched to this.

In the first diary letter of the B version, Anne explained that the diary idea came about because she does not have a girlfriend, that the diary itself will be the girlfriend and that that girlfriend is called Kitty.^[34] All the diary letters of the B version begin with Dear Kitty.

Retrospective

In response to Minister of Education Bolkestein's appeal on Radio Orange on 28 March 1944, Anne began rewriting her original diary on loose (light yellow, light blue, pink and grey) sheets of copy paper, commonly called the loose sheets, in late May 1944.^[35] Bep Voskuijl stated that she had provided Anne with this carbon copy paper.^[14]

"Mr. Bolkestein, the Cabinet Minister, speaking on the Dutch broadcast from London, said that after the war, a collection would be made of diaries and letters dealing with the war. Of course everyone pounced on my diary. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a novel about the Secret Annex. The title alone would make people think it was a detective story."

And on Saturday 20 May 1944, Anne Frank writes: "At long last after a great deal of reflection I have started my 'Achterhuis', in my head it is as good as finished, although it won't go as quickly as that really, if it ever comes off at all."

The loose sheets cover the period from 20 June 1942 to 29 March 1944. Anne thus edited her original diaries into the B-version in just over two months. It is important to realise here that although Anne used her original diaries as a basis, the B version was written retrospectively. She describes events from 1942 and 1943 in the spring and summer of 1944. For example, in the A-version, she writes of her diary: "I am oh so glad I took you with me."^[29] In the B-version, she emphasises the importance of her diary by writing that she packed it first on the night before they went into hiding.^[10]

The fountain pen Anne wrote with, a present from Grandma Höllander for her ninth birthday, accidentally disappeared into the stove along with the potato peels.^[36]

Anne repeatedly mentions how important writing is to her. For instance, she thanks God for giving her the opportunity to express herself through it.^[37] She writes that she wants to become a journalist and: "no one who does not write knows how fine writing is; I used to regret that I could not draw at all, but now I am overjoyed that at least I can write."

In the summer of 1943, Anne started writing stories. The stories were recorded in the diary, on loose sheets and in a cardboard notebook.^[38] She wanted to try to get one of her fairy tales placed in the magazine De Prins under a nom de plume, but thought it would not succeed because her fairy tales were too long.^[39] Otto Frank said about this after the war that Anne asked Kleiman to send the story Blurry the Explorer under his daughter's name. Kleiman thought this was too dangerous. In the story The Best Little Table, we read that Anne had daily access to the little table in the room she shared with Fritz Pfeffer from 2.30 to 4 pm.^[40] With great difficulty, she fought for an extra hour and a half twice a week.

Around the same time when Anne started writing her stories, she received the booklet Literature and Style Study for her fourteenth birthday.^[41] It was an anthology of literary prose and verse explaining stylistic figures and characteristics of different writers.