File P 1/21 - Diaries

Pocket notebooks and diaries (some unused), comprising Rider's British merlin, 1734, 1736-1737, 1740, 1743, 1747, 1749 (2), 1750 (2), 1755, 1759, 1761, 1763, 1767-1768, 1771, 1773-1774, 1776, 1777-1779 (2 each), 1780, 1786, 1787 (2), 1788, 1789-1790 (2 each), 1791-1794, 1796, 1798, The new memorandum book improv'd: or, the gentleman and tradesman's journal, 1753, The ladies complete pocket-book, 1761-1763, 1768, 1769 ('British ladies'), 1771-1773, 1784, The ladies new and polite pocket and memorandum-book, 1766, Peacock's polite repository or pocket companion, 1781, 1795, 1801, 1802 (2), 1803, 1813, 1814, The polite repository or pocket companion, 1784, 1787, The regent, or royal tablet of memory, 1825, Pettitt's annual diary, 1871, 1883, 1887-1888, and an unnamed diary for 1785. -- The 1743 diary is endorsed 'Jane Morgan's', and one of the 1777 diaries is endorsed 'Jane Gould of the Horse Guards'. -- The diaries include notes and personal and office accounts, including at Oxford. The 1734 diary includes a note that the writer's mother died 4 April 1734, and the 1750 diary includes notes of earthquakes on 8 Feb. and 8 March, and in Feb. that 'all this month Jupiter was so near ye Earth as to be very much magnify'd - even to 2'ce or 3'ce its usual appearance; some pretended to see his Satellites with naked eye'. Several of the diaries include loose notes, newspaper cuttings, scraps of material, a few contain leaves, and one of the 1787 diaries and one of the 1802 diaries both contain locks of hair. One of the 1788 diaires encloses five silhoettes, and the 1813 diary encloses a cutting describing the Tredegar [Christmas?] festivities.