The famous diary of Maria Bashkirtseva is a unique evidence of the growing up, development and character formation of a very extraordinary girl, a talented artist (her works are kept in both the Russian Museum and the Orsay Museum)... Her life was cut short very early, at the age of twenty-five, by consumption. . The young lady kept a diary in French from the age of twelve: one hundred and six thick notebooks, daily candid entries. She wanted the diary to be published after her death, because “it cannot be that it would not be interesting.” In the new version of the translation, carefully verified according to authoritative French publications and manuscripts, it was possible to preserve the author’s intonation with which Maria recorded everything: her first loves and the first kiss, disappointments and troubles in the family, illness in its inexorable, unstoppable development, passion for art, desire for fame and desire to live, hopes of youth...