Alma Mahler-Werfel: Diaries 1898-1902, by Antony Beaumont.

The original manuscript of these diaries, which present an eye-witness record of historical events in the worlds of art and music at the turn of the century, lay unread in the library of an American university until Antony Beaumont read it in search of the truth about Mahler-Werfel and Zemlinsky.

But he found more: an account, in intimate detail, of the four years during which Mahler-Werfel grew from adolescence into womanhood.

Opening with her first, heady affair with Klimt, the diaries break off shortly before her marriage to Mahler. They portray the vitality of everyday life, descriptions of significant artistic events, and insights into the behavioural patterns and linguistic conventions of the Vienna of 1900.