Chronology and publishing history

Lundbye's diaries were kept over a six-year period from 24 March 1842 to 15 April 1848 and comprise seven books or booklets with a total of 698 pages of handwritten diary entries. In the database, the seven diaries are labelled with the letters A to G, as Karl Madsen did in his Lundbye monograph from 1895. About a quarter of the diaries' contents have not previously been published in their entirety, namely diaries C and D from 1843-1845, which belong to Den kgl. Kobberstiksamling and The Hirschsprung Collection. Apart from Karl Madsen's publication of various extracts from the diaries (1918, republished 1961), the remaining three-quarters of the diary text has been published in four different editions and with widely varying levels of commentary. Diary A from the years 1842-1843 was published in 1967 by Mogens Lebech under the title Et år af mit liv. The following year, a small booklet with records from the summer of 1843 (Diary C) was published by N.L. Faaborg in the annual Fund og Forskning, followed in 1976 by the publication of Lundbye's three travel diaries from 1845-46 (Diary E, F and G). The latter publication was the work of Bjarne Jørnæs assisted by a team of students at the University of Copenhagen (namely Verner Jul Andersen, Bente Holst Christensen, Kirsten Danneboe, Anne Jacobsen, Vibeke Knudsen, Jette Kjærboe Larsen, Steen Fridlund Plewing, Bente Scavenius, Bente Schiøler and Annette Stabell). Most recently, the diary entries from Lundbye's last year of life (contained in Diary D) were published by Ettore Rocca in the catalogue for the exhibition Længsel – Lundbye og Kierkegaard at The Nivaagaard Collection and Ribe Art Museum in 2013. The editor owes a debt of gratitude to all these colleagues, as this edition builds to some extent on their work. In all cases, however, I have felt it right to correct previous transcriptions or to transcribe the text anew, to add my own comments (often fewer or more than in previous editions) and generally to strive for editorial consistency.

Principles for transcription

• Lundbye's spelling has been retained in all cases, and Lundbye's underlining in the manuscript is reproduced in italics.
• Page breaks and page numbers in the manuscript are indicated in the text between two heavy dots, e.g. •12• indicating that ‘here begins page 12’.
• Editorial comments and missing words are indicated in the text in [square brackets].
• Crossed-out words in the manuscript are indicated as [crossed out:], while words and phrases added above the line, below the line or in the margin are indicated between vertical lines. These changes are all due to Lundbye himself, unless otherwise indicated by a note. Crossed-out words and characters are only reproduced where they reflect Lundbye's considerations of a substantive or stylistic nature (and, less frequently, where they reflect a later reader's censorship), but not where they are simply corrections of errors.

Principles for annotation
The editorial annotations of the original text are intended to support the reading and to clarify misunderstood references. The ambition has been that the notes should first and foremost contribute to the identification of Lundbye's own mentioned works; identification of people from Lundbye's own time; identification of the post-antique works of art that Lundbye mentions having seen in art collections; and identification of the literature that Lundbye so diligently reads and quotes. Topographical notes, on the other hand, are kept to a minimum, while works that are still in the churches mentioned are only exceptionally annotated.

Editor
Comments and suggestions for improvements can be sent to project editor Jesper Svenningsen, jsv@smk.dk