Several diaries of late English actor Alan Rickman, widely known for playing the role of Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series, will be compiled and published as a book, The Guardian reported on Saturday.
Publisher Canongate has acquired the rights of the actor’s 27 handwritten volumes that span across his 25 year-old career.
The late actor, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2016, started journalling during the 90s with the intention of publishing them.
After a long stint in English theatre, Rickman debuted on the big screen with the 1988 film Die Hard.
Apart from giving his fans an understanding of his private circles and interests in politics, the diaries also include behind-the-scene stories and tales from the Harry Potter sets that he was a part of for a decade, from 2001 to 2011.
“I’m delighted that Canongate will be publishing Alan’s diaries, and couldn’t have wished for a finer appointment of editor than Alan Taylor,” said Rima Horton, Rickman’s wife, who was with him since 1965, stated The Guardian.
“The diaries reveal not just Alan Rickman the actor, but the real Alan – his sense of humour, his sharp observation, his craftsmanship and his devotion to the arts,” she said.
To be titled The Diaries of Alan Rickman, the diary entries will be edited by Alan Taylor, editor of the Scottish Review of Books. He has also put together The Country Diaries, a treasury of pastoral journals by the likes of Beatrix Potter, Dorothy Wordsworth and John Fowles, for Canongate.
Taylor told The Guardian that Rickman’s diaries were “anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid” making it “compulsive reading” for people in both US and UK.
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“More than anything though, the diaries reveal the real Alan Rickman, funny, passionate, occasionally provocative, and give fresh insight into his art,” Canongate told The Guardian.
“He wrote his diaries as if chatting with a close friend. They provide pitch-perfect vignettes: short, pithy paragraphs painting big pictures, and offering intriguing insights into himself, his peers and the world around him. They are intimate, perceptive and very funny.”
The book, once edited, will be published by Canongate across the world, and by Holt in the US.