The Journal of a Georgian Gentleman: The Life and Times of Richard Hall 1729-1801 Mike Rendell
The historical value and interest of diaries is not so much in their accounts of great historical events but in their ability to convey the quality - the sights, smells and textures - of everyday life that would otherwise be lost to us. It is everyday life that abounds in the diaries of Richard Hall, a sometimes pious Baptist haberdasher who kept shop at Number OneLondon Bridge through much of the late eighteenth century. He recorded what he ate, what he purchased, how he slept and above all what the weather was like in near obsessive detail. He charts the hurly-burly of family life - he had two marriages and numerous children - his sometimes tumultuous relationship with his church, and his boundless curiousity about almost everything - from astronomy to the latest fashions. His great-gr...
