Where to Start with Anne Frank: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Anne Frank — how to approach The Diary of a Young Girl, the most widely read Holocaust document in history. A complete reading guide.
By Oliver Kane
Anne Frank (1929–1945) was a German-born Jewish girl who grew up in Amsterdam and kept a diary during the two years her family spent in hiding from the Nazis before their arrest in 1944. Her diary — published by her father Otto Frank in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl — has been translated into over seventy languages and sold more than thirty million copies, becoming one of the most widely read books in human history and the most personal and immediate account of what it meant to be Jewish and in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Where to Start: The Diary of a Young Girl (published 1947)
The only work — and one of the most important documents of the twentieth century. Anne Frank began keeping a diary on her thirteenth birthday, in June 1942. A month later, the Frank family went into hiding in the Secret Annexe — a concealed apartment above her father’s business on the Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam — together with four other Jewish people. They would remain there for two years.
Anne wrote about everything: the claustrophobia of eight people sharing a small space, the tensions between them (her difficult relationship with her mother, her friendships, her developing feelings for Peter van Pels), the daily routines of hiding, the news from outside that reached them through Dutch helpers, her intellectual interests and her ambitions to become a writer. She read voraciously, studied languages, and wrote with a self-awareness and literary quality that is extraordinary for a teenager.
In 1944 she heard a radio broadcast suggesting that personal accounts of the occupation would be valuable after the war. She began editing her own diary, with a title — The Secret Annexe — and a narrative voice she had been refining. The diary as published is partly the raw record and partly the edited version she was working on when the Annexe was discovered.
What makes the diary impossible to put down is the combination of its historical importance and its intimacy: Anne writes as a girl discovering herself — her opinions, her sexuality, her ambitions — while living in one of the most extreme circumstances in modern European history. The two registers — the ordinary and the catastrophic — are held together by a voice of unusual clarity and courage.
Read the Definitive Edition (1995) for the most complete text.
Why The Diary of a Young Girl Is the Essential First Book
For a reader new to Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl is the essential first book because it is her singular and defining work, one of the most important and widely read documents of the twentieth century, and the full expression of her remarkable voice. The Diary of a Young Girl records the thoughts, observations, and inner life of a Jewish teenager hiding with her family from the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam, written in the months before her capture and death in the Holocaust. As an entry point, it is the natural and essential place to begin, for it is Anne Frank’s singular work, the diary that has made her one of the most powerful and personal witnesses to the Holocaust. It welcomes the newcomer with its intimate voice, its remarkable insight, and its profound human and historical importance, drawing the reader into the inner life of a young girl in hiding. It is her singular work and the fullest expression of her voice, so that the new reader encounters Anne Frank directly. For the newcomer, then, The Diary of a Young Girl is the natural and essential starting point.
What to Expect as a New Reader
As a new reader, you can expect The Diary of a Young Girl to be an intimate, moving, and profoundly important document, recording the inner life of a Jewish teenager in hiding during the Holocaust. You can expect an intimate voice, for the diary records Anne Frank’s thoughts, observations, hopes, fears, and inner life with the directness and honesty of a teenager writing for herself. You can expect remarkable insight and humanity, for Anne Frank was a gifted, perceptive, and thoughtful writer, and the diary reveals a vivid personality and a striking maturity of observation and reflection. You can expect the tension and confinement of life in hiding, for the diary records the daily realities, fears, and frustrations of the family’s concealment from the Nazis. You can expect profound emotional and historical power, for the diary is both an intimate personal document and one of the most powerful witnesses to the Holocaust, made all the more devastating by the knowledge of its author’s fate. Expect, in short, an intimate, moving, and profoundly important record of a young girl’s inner life in hiding during the Holocaust, an essential introduction to Anne Frank.
Going Deeper After Your First Book
Once The Diary of a Young Girl has introduced you to Anne Frank’s voice and story, the reader who wishes to go deeper can turn to the wider literature of the Holocaust, of which her diary is one of the most powerful and personal documents, reading further in the light of the intimate witness that her diary provides. The diary connects to a vast and essential body of Holocaust literature, the testimonies, memoirs, histories, and other writings that document and bear witness to the catastrophe, and the reader moved by Anne Frank’s diary can deepen their understanding through these further works. Reading more deeply deepens your engagement with the history and the human reality of the Holocaust, but Anne Frank’s diary offers a uniquely intimate and personal point of entry. Her diary preserves the voice and humanity of a single young victim, and reading the wider literature extends that witness to the millions. Building your reading journey from The Diary of a Young Girl is a matter of carrying its intimate witness into the wider literature of the Holocaust. The reader who begins with The Diary of a Young Girl will have encountered one of the most important and personal documents of the twentieth century.
Reading Anne Frank
The Diary of a Young Girl is Anne Frank’s only work. It is one of the essential books of the twentieth century; no secondary or contextual reading is necessary first, though readers who want historical background may find David Barnouw’s The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition useful for the scholarly apparatus.
For the full Anne Frank bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Anne Frank author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Anne Frank?
The Diary of a Young Girl (written 1942–1944, published 1947) is the only work — Anne Frank's diary, kept during the two years her family spent hiding from the Nazis in a concealed apartment in Amsterdam. One of the most widely read books in human history; the most personal account of the Holocaust as lived experience by a young person in hiding. The definitive edition to read is the 'Definitive Edition' (1995), which restores passages her father Otto Frank omitted from the original publication.
What is The Diary of a Young Girl about?
The diary covers the period from June 1942 to August 1944, when Anne Frank was thirteen to fifteen years old, in hiding with her family and four others in the Secret Annexe above her father's business in Amsterdam. Anne wrote with unusual self-awareness and literary ambition; she edited the diary herself in 1944 after hearing a radio broadcast suggesting that personal accounts of the occupation would be historically valuable. The diary describes daily life in hiding — the tensions between eight people in close confinement, Anne's intellectual and emotional development, her relationships, her ambitions to become a writer, and the ever-present fear of discovery.
What edition of the diary should I read?
The Definitive Edition (1995), edited by Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler, is the most complete version — restoring passages that Otto Frank omitted from the original 1947 edition (primarily those discussing Anne's emerging sexuality and her more critical observations about her mother). It is approximately 30% longer than the original edition. For readers who want the most complete account, the Definitive Edition is essential. There is also a Critical Edition (2003) published by the Dutch Institute for War Documentation that includes all versions of the text for scholarly comparison.
What happened to Anne Frank?
The Secret Annexe was discovered by the Gestapo on 4 August 1944, following an anonymous tip. All eight inhabitants were arrested. Anne Frank was transported first to Westerbork transit camp and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau; she was subsequently transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died of typhus in February or March 1945, weeks before the camp's liberation. She was fifteen years old. Her father Otto Frank was the only member of the Annexe group to survive the war; he returned to Amsterdam and found Anne's diary, preserved by his secretary Miep Gies.
