{"id":5730,"date":"2022-01-30T14:37:41","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T14:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.burnham-press.co.uk\/?p=5730"},"modified":"2026-03-26T20:45:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:45:28","slug":"jan-2022-a-tour-de-force-three-further-very-positive-book-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.burnham-press.co.uk\/archive\/jan-2022-a-tour-de-force-three-further-very-positive-book-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan. 2022, “A tour de force”: Three further very positive book reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three further detailed book reviews of Mary Hardy and her World<\/em> came out in late 2021. Two were in academic journals which do not publish unsolicited reviews, and one in a specialist journal. Like all the other reviews, for both the Diary and World volumes, they are full of praise.<\/p>\n

Summaries appear here as a news item. They are covered in greater depth as separate pages under Reviews<\/a> on this website, where the full citations and links to each journal can be found.<\/p>\n

“The world of Mary Hardy and her husband William was local, regional, national and . . . international”<\/h3>\n

Professor G.M. Ditchfield has reviewed all four volumes in the latest issue of the English Historical Review<\/em>, for October 2021.<\/em> Founded in 1886, the EHR<\/em> is described on its website as “the oldest journal of historical scholarship in the English-speaking world”.<\/p>\n

His four-page review opens with the significance of the wide-ranging content of all four volumes:<\/p>\n

Their terms of reference are very wide and demonstrate that the world of Mary Hardy (1733\u20131809) and her husband William (1732\u20131811) was local, regional, national and in some respects international . . .<\/p>\n

The Hardy family were of the ‘middling sort’, small-scale employers who expanded their business enterprises through a combination of hard work, frugality, effective management of time, and an ability to recognize and seize economic opportunities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Grayson Ditchfield concludes that “historians of many specialities will find material of interest in these volumes . . . The quality of presentation is very high.” Like other reviewers he pays tribute to the compilation of a “splendidly comprehensive index” for each self-contained volume.<\/p>\n

\"Mary

The cover of Volume 2 in this four-volume edition shows the farmer and brewer William Hardy jnr superimposed against the contemporary painting by Vincent<\/p><\/div>\n

“A well-researched tour de force\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n

Susanna Wade Martins is a very well-known name in British agricultural and rural history. She writes in the Agricultural History Review<\/em> for the second half of 2021:<\/p>\n

Margaret Bird has produced a formidable, detailed, well-researched tour de force<\/em> showing clearly what can be learnt about a little-studied branch of rural society, the upwardly mobile operators of successful rural businesses, through the pages of a unique journal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The 6\u00bd-column review concentrates on the first two volumes, with their subtitles A working family<\/em>\u00a0and Barley, beer and the working year<\/em>. Referring to the diaries of Mary Hardy around which the commentary volumes are centred, Dr Wade Martins observes:<\/p>\n

There are many reasons why the diaries are so valuable. They are a detailed daily record covering 36 years. They are written, not by one of the gentry or aristocracy, but are a factual account written by a busy woman and active member of a working family, covering the domestic, agricultural, manufacturing, shipping, political and religious concerns with which she was fully involved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The review highlights the value of Mary Hardy’s achievement in pointing up “the contrast between the working wife and genteel society”.<\/p>\n

“Encyclopaedic, detailed, accurate and overall very entertaining”<\/h3>\n

The brewing historian Ken Smith, former editor of the Brewery History Society’s journal Brewery History<\/em>, reviewed Volume 2 for the journal for Spring 2021.<\/p>\n

He evaluates the book as “worthy of a place on any degree course in social, economic or industrial history and of great interest to us brewery historians as it sets a scene of pre-industrialisation”. He adds:<\/p>\n

They [the volumes] are encyclopaedic, detailed, accurate and overall very entertaining . . . This is the story of nationwide radical change from an agrarian economy to an industrial one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three further detailed book reviews of Mary Hardy and her World came out in late 2021. Two were in academic journals which do not publish unsolicited reviews, and one in a specialist journal. Like all the other reviews, for both the Diary and World volumes, they are full of praise. 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