{"id":1810,"date":"2015-03-06T12:38:26","date_gmt":"2015-03-06T12:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maryhardysdiary.co.uk\/?page_id=1810"},"modified":"2025-02-03T18:09:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T18:09:52","slug":"one-of-the-most-consistent-enduring-and-revealing-primary-sources","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.burnham-press.co.uk\/archive\/mary-hardys-diary\/reviews\/one-of-the-most-consistent-enduring-and-revealing-primary-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"“One of the most consistent, enduring and revealing primary sources of its period”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A long and very favourable academic review by Professor G.M. Ditchfield, Emeritus Professor of Eighteenth-Century History at the University of Kent, has appeared in the English Historical Review<\/em> for February 2015. These extracts give a flavour of his comments.<\/p>\n

Details of where to find the review appear at the foot of this page.<\/p>\n

The value of Mary Hardy as a source<\/h3>\n

Grayson Ditchfield is in no doubt as to the significance of Mary Hardy as a diarist. Referring to her record, and that of\u00a0her nephew Henry Raven (interwoven with\u00a0her own entries in this edition), he explains that they comprise\u00a0more than 570,000 words:<\/p>\n

“This daily record, meticulously kept over thirty-six years, of working life and entrepreneurship in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England offers one of the most consistent, enduring and revealing primary sources of its\u00a0period.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The value lies partly in the workaday nature of the diary entries. Professor Ditchfield sees Mary and William Hardy as “neither belonging to nor aspiring to join the polite elite of their county”. Nonetheless they “exerted influence in the commercial world and were part of the political nation”.<\/p>\n

The diarist as a “comparative rarity”<\/h3>\n

The reviewer points out that Mary Hardy’s record has additional value as she was\u00a0a woman\u00a0engaged in the world of work. She was herself a toiler:<\/p>\n

“Behind the emotional reticence there is a day-by-day description of rural life, all the more valuable for its compilation by that comparative rarity, a female diarist deeply involved in the world of work, both as toiler and as employer.<\/p>\n

Through Mary Hardy, we encounter many individuals whose identities, apart from the registration by the parish of their rites of passage, are otherwise lost to us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Female influence in religious developments<\/h3>\n

Religious and ecclesiastical history are among Professor\u00a0Ditchfield’s specialist interests. He devotes a section of the review\u00a0to Mary Hardy’s experimentation with a\u00a0wide variety of denominations in addition to regular attendance at Church of England services and Wesleyan meetings. He adds:<\/p>\n

“Significantly, her husband\u00a0did not become a Methodist\u2014further evidence that Methodism frequently won its first converts in many areas through the female members of a family.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Handsome production standards and scholarly\u00a0editing<\/h3>\n

The review praises\u00a0the high standards of editing and production, with “meticulous annotations arranged in side-notes”:<\/p>\n

“Every diary entry is fully and expertly contextualised . . . The index to each volume is impeccably comprehensive and lucidly arranged.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the full text has been published there is no danger that careful editorial selection of individual entries may give the reader an unrepresentative view of the whole.<\/p>\n

“A long-standing commitment by an individual scholar”<\/h3>\n

Grayson Ditchfield draws attention to what is now an unusual history project. (Pressure to produce means that devotion to one subject\u00a0involving decades of research and writing\u2014once widely pursued\u00a0and perhaps even the norm\u2014is\u00a0no longer possible in the full-time academic environment.) He writes:<\/p>\n

“This edition is the result of a long-standing commitment by an individual scholar, as distinct from the collaborative projects, financed by grant-awarding bodies, which are becoming increasingly the expectation in assessments of historical research in universities.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He concludes that “On account of the handsome appearance and the painstaking thoroughness of the edition, the cost of the four diary volumes plus the Remaining Diary<\/em>\u00a0can be considered a real bargain at present-day book prices.”<\/p>\n

Accessing the full book review<\/h3>\n

The English Historical Review<\/em> (EHR<\/em>) \u00a0has been well known to generations of historians since it first appeared in January 1886. The EHR\u00a0website describes it as “the oldest\u00a0journal of historical scholarship in the English-speaking world”. It ranges across not\u00a0only British history but almost all aspects of European and world history since the classical era. The EHR<\/em> book reviews are unusually extensive as they cover\u00a0titles published throughout the world.<\/p>\n

The review of the four-volume Diary of Mary Hardy 1773\u20131809<\/em> and its companion volume The Remaining Diary of Mary Hardy<\/em>\u00a0(containing the diary entries not included in the four-volume set) appears in the EHR<\/em>, volume 130, no. 542, for February 2015, pp. 219\u201321.<\/p>\n

It is available to subscribers as a printed edition and online. Many libraries stock the full run of the\u00a0EHR<\/em>, or have online access, and the content of any issue can also be accessed via an academic institution or other subscribing body.<\/p>\n

An\u00a0extract, forming the\u00a0opening paragraph of the review, is available for open, free access online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A long and very favourable academic review by Professor G.M. Ditchfield, Emeritus Professor of Eighteenth-Century History at the University of Kent, has appeared in the English Historical Review for February 2015. These extracts give a flavour of his comments. Details of where to find the review appear at the foot of this page. The value […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1452,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1810","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n"One of the most consistent, enduring and revealing primary sources of its period" - Burnham Press<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This daily record of working life and entrepreneurship in late eighteenth-century England wins praise in an academic book review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""One of the most consistent, enduring and revealing primary sources of its period" - Burnham Press\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This daily record of working life and entrepreneurship in late eighteenth-century England wins praise in an academic book review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.burnham-press.co.uk\/archive\/mary-hardys-diary\/reviews\/one-of-the-most-consistent-enduring-and-revealing-primary-sources\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Burnham Press\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-02-03T18:09:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.burnham-press.co.uk\/archive\/mary-hardys-diary\/reviews\/one-of-the-most-consistent-enduring-and-revealing-primary-sources\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.burnham-press.co.uk\/archive\/mary-hardys-diary\/reviews\/one-of-the-most-consistent-enduring-and-revealing-primary-sources\/\",\"name\":\"\\\"One of the most consistent, enduring and revealing primary sources of its period\\\" - 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