Today in literary history: June 25

Here's what happened on June 25 in literary history.

Anne Frank’s diary was first published June 25, 1947.

It took her father, Otto, some time to first read his late daughter's papers and then to seek publication for them, which the relatives and friends he was sharing excerpts with had urged. 

Publishers were initially not interested in a work that looked back on the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, but after one of Otto's friends published a column about it in a newspaper, an Amsterdam publishing house became interested.

The book we know today combined both Anne's private writings and the revisions that she had worked on in order to publish, under the title Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex).

The first Dutch editions sold so well that Otto Frank began seeking translations, first in French, then German, then in English (twice — once for British readers and once for American ones).

The American edition wasn't a foregone conclusion, though. The first people at Doubleday to see it rejected it, because of both its content and its author's age.

But a savvier editor argued for it, successfully; the first edition of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, containing a foreword by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, sold out within days.

Today, you can read Anne Frank's diary in more than seventy-five languages, and it has sold over 30 million copies.

Sources: Anne Frank House, History.com