Kilvert's Diary. Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert, 1 January 1870 - 19 August 1871

Chosen, edited and introduced by William Plomer. Three volumes, complete. First Edition. 8vo. Publisher's green cloth with the light brown dust-jackets, unclipped, with stain marks of old labels on spines. Owner's name and date inked in on front endpaper in vol 1. An excellent and clean set. Kilvert's diaries record the life of Francis Kilvert between January 1870 and March 1879, when he was in his thirties. Born in Hardenhuish, Wiltshire, on 3 December 1840, elder son of the Revd Robert Kilvert and Thermuthis Mary née Coleman, Francis had four sisters and one brother. Most of his childhood was spent at Langley Burrell, Wiltshire, where his father was given a living by a relative of Mrs Kilvert. After school in Bath, Francis took a degree at Wadham College, Oxford and was ordained priest at Bristol Cathedral in 1864. He spent two periods as curate to his father, the second recorded in the Diary, but his happiest years were as curate in Clyro, Radnorshire, between 1865 and 1872. There, he gloried in the beauty of the countryside, taking long walks in the Black Hills and enjoying the hospitality of local farmers, millers and cottage dwellers. His Diary records talks with old people, from whom he learned what it was like to be a soldier in the Peninsula War, or in the Crimea, or what a maidservant saw of the coronation of George IV in London, or that an eighty year old wore a tall Welsh hat till she was grown up. He visited the poor and destitute, organising blankets, medicine and nursing care, as well as prayers and Bible readings. He found life entertaining and often funny. Kilvert wanted to be an author. His poems were rejected by a commercial publisher and privately published by his family after his death. But it is his Diary that revealed his quality as a writer.