James Woodforde (1740–1803)

One of the best first hand sources for social history in the late 18th century, this is a famous diary kept for over 20 years by an Anglican clergyman who would be totally obscure without the diary's existence. Although the diary is best known for its notes about the meals Woodforde indulged in, what is really significant is the annual rhythm and rituals of country life, and the sense of isolation from 'news', even though the village he lived in was only a short distance from one of England's more substantial cities. Most editions are in one volume, but there is a five volume set in existence and the Woodforde Society is gradually publishing a complete set of transcriptions. The earlier parts of the diary have interesting glimpses of Oxford college life.… (meer)

"Very flat, Norfolk", says a character in Noel Coward's "Private Lives"; and like the county in which the Rev. James Woodward spent most of his clerical life, his enormous daily diary is mostly very flat. That is not to say it is without incident, but it does mean that a sympathetic editor can, without great loss to the modern reader, make a principled single volume selection as has been done here. Much of its interest lies in the details of daily life and the interaction of personalities in what was a remote English farming community. As it was intended for and expected to be kept and read by his descendants there are none of the personal revelations of, for example, Boswell's "London Journal" or Pepys' diaries; but it has a charm of its own in its record of the daily life of a good man beset by irritations and cheered by kindnesses.… (meer)