The diaries of Charlotte Downes

Book excerpt: The Diaries of Charlotte Downes, Volume I, is the third in a four-volume set, covering years 1828, 1829, 1831-1837. The diaries afford the reader a glimpse of a small corner of rural England from the Regency through to the early-mid Victorian periods when life was based on a timeless and often precarious agricultural economy, a rigid, inequitable class system and deference to an authoritative Church. Charlotte, the daughter of an influential Wiltshire land-owner, was first cousin to the poet Shelley; she later married Richard Downes, rector of Berwick St John. Her diaries, together with those of her sister, Harriet, have been described by one authority as "like a novel by Jane Austen, but for real". This full transcription contains entries spanning a period of almost fifty years and provides a useful resource for scholars and social historians alike. Family historians will find recorded within these pages an extraordinary number of named individuals, from families representing all sections of society.