Overview

This is the story of a hardworking woman told in her own words. The opening volume gives the full text of her years at Coltishall, on the Norfolk Broads near Norwich. The diarist's husband William, a former excise officer, is a brewery manager and tenant of a small farm. In 1776 he builds a sailing barge, a wherry, to carry his produce down to the port of Great Yarmouth. His wife, with three very young children, copes with all the problems that come their way. She nurses the younger two through smallpox inoculation and works long hours at a nearby public house during an innkeeping interregnum. The eccentric curate and some drink-prone and indebted innkeepers add to her load. The set of four volumes is offered at a special price (ISBN 978-0-9573360-4-9), where you can read more about this lavishly illustrated and annotated edition of the diary.

Full Product Details

Author:   Margaret Bird
Publisher:   Burnham Press
Imprint:   Burnham Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.80cm , Height: 3.70cm , Length: 21.00cm
Weight:   1.230kg
ISBN:  

9780957336001

ISBN 10:   0957336004
Pages:   606
Publication Date:   30 April 2013
Audience:   General/trade ,  Young adult ,  College/higher education ,  General ,  Teenage / Young adult
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Reviews

Four reviews. 1: A wonderful view of an upwardly mobile family (review by Professor Richard G. Wilson, in the Journal of the Parson Woodforde Society, Winter 2013, pp. 21-6). He describes the volumes as a notable addition to the long roll-call of English diaries ... They provide a revealing insight into the powerful forces at work in accelerating economic and social change ... She [Mary Hardy] records a world of work and of advancement. 2: Everything in the books [the Diary volumes] describes in great detail the social, economic and financial environment of the 18th century (Ken Smith, in the journal Brewery History, 25 Nov. 2013). He refers to the editor Margaret Bird's painstaking accuracy , a diary text that is richly annotated and explained , and indexes of great depth . (Brewery History, no. 154, pp. 89-90). 3: Incredibly rich material (by the former County Archivist for Surrey, 17 Aug. 2013). Everything about the presentation of this incredibly rich material has been considered with the reader in mind ... If Margaret Bird had 'just' transcribed the whole of Mary Hardy's output, half a million words covering nearly 36 years, ... it would have been a work of an outstanding scale. However, over the last 25 years she has undertaken in-depth research on every topic and person that the entries encompass ... The detailed footnotes, which are rather unusually but very conveniently placed down the side of the page, illuminate what could be otherwise fairly obscure entries ... The 460-page index is especially user-friendly. (by Maggie Vaughan-Lewis, in the Journal of the Aylsham Local History Society, Aug. 2013, pp. 294-6). 4: Remarkable feat of scholarly dedication (Eastern Daily Press, 8 June 2013). Over the years I've read - and reviewed - many local books. But this project really is in a class of its own ... possibly the greatest single piece of scholarship on a Norfolk topic since the Rev Francis Blomefield embarked on his monumental survey of the county in the 18th century ... And the author has not finished yet: four volumes of commentary and analysis will follow. (by Trevor Heaton, Books editor)

Five reviews. 1: One of the most consistent, enduring and revealing primary sources of its period (review by Professor G.M. Ditchfield, in the English Historical Review, February 2015, pp. 219-21). He has warm praise for the value of the source, Mary Hardy being that comparative rarity, a female diarist deeply involved in the world of work, both as toiler and as employer . He also draws attention to the professionalism and painstaking thoroughness of the editing and to the index to each volume of the diary: impeccably comprehensive and lucidly arranged . Given the very large number of illustrations and the handsome appearance of this four-volume edition he considers the books a real bargain . 2: A wonderful view of an upwardly mobile family (review by Professor Richard G. Wilson, in the Journal of the Parson Woodforde Society, Winter 2013, pp. 21-6). He describes the volumes as a notable addition to the long roll-call of English diaries ... They provide a revealing insight into the powerful forces at work in accelerating economic and social change ... She [Mary Hardy] records a world of work and of advancement. 3: Everything in the books [the Diary volumes] describes in great detail the social, economic and financial environment of the 18th century (Ken Smith, in the journal Brewery History, 25 Nov. 2013). He refers to the editor Margaret Bird's painstaking accuracy , a diary text that is richly annotated and explained , and indexes of great depth . (Brewery History, no. 154, pp. 89-90). 4: Incredibly rich material (by the former County Archivist for Surrey, 17 Aug. 2013). Everything about the presentation of this incredibly rich material has been considered with the reader in mind ... If Margaret Bird had 'just' transcribed the whole of Mary Hardy's output, half a million words covering nearly 36 years, ... it would have been a work of an outstanding scale. However, over the last 25 years she has undertaken in-depth research on every topic and person that the entries encompass ... The detailed footnotes, which are rather unusually but very conveniently placed down the side of the page, illuminate what could be otherwise fairly obscure entries ... The 460-page index is especially user-friendly. (by Maggie Vaughan-Lewis, in the Journal of the Aylsham Local History Society, Aug. 2013, pp. 294-6). 5: Remarkable feat of scholarly dedication (Eastern Daily Press, 8 June 2013). Over the years I've read - and reviewed - many local books. But this project really is in a class of its own ... possibly the greatest single piece of scholarship on a Norfolk topic since the Rev Francis Blomefield embarked on his monumental survey of the county in the 18th century ... And the author has not finished yet: four volumes of commentary and analysis will follow. (by Trevor Heaton, Books editor)

Author Information

The editor Margaret Bird has been an honorary research fellow in the History department of Royal Holloway, University of London since 2006. For both her first degree at St Anne's College, Oxford and her master's at Royal Holloway she specialised in aspects of English 18th-century history. She has been continuously engaged since 1988 in researching and editing this work, published in five volumes. She has now brought out not only the full text of this diary but of Mary Hardy's nephew Henry Raven, who as the brewery apprentice lived in the same household. Their unusual diaries together total more than 570,000 words. Four volumes of commentary and analysis will follow, entitled Mary Hardy and her World 1773-1809. In June 2015 Margaret Bird won the award of the British Association for Local History (BALH) for Research and Publication as the overall winner in the long-articles category for her article 'Supplying the beer', first published in The Glaven Historian in 2014. She drew on her Mary Hardy research as the principal source for this study of life on the road in late-18th-century Norfolk.

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