Kilvert's Diary, 1870-79 (Penguin)

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Heywood's yacht the Mistletoe in Stokes Bay with a loss of three lives, the master, the mate and Miss Annie Peel, the sister of Mrs. The diary format, working as a mosaic composed of random little slivers of colour, creates a curious, sometimes jarring effect -- one minute Kilvert is in a cottage hearing some gruesome gossip of death and disaster and madness, the next he's sauntering off down the lane noticing poetic things and about wildflowers.

It's fun to look up all the history Kilvert is living through, but the best parts come when he describes his 11 mile hikes to farms and hermits and villages. The first entry in Kilvert's diaries in which he records his naked bathing was for 4 September 1872, at Weston-super-Mare. Initially, from 1863 to 1864, he was curate to his father at Langley Burrell, and in 1865 he became curate of Clyro, Radnorshire. Kilvet's diary paints an excellent picture of Victorian country life; as a clergyman, he interacted with pretty much all classes, and he was sympathetic to the problems of the poor (which is not exactly a given with the Church of England in the 19th Century).One of the bearers on the right side was very short, so short that he could not properly support the coffin level. A country clergyman born in 1840, Kilvert spent much of his time visiting parishioners, walking the lanes and fields of Herefordshire and writing in his diary. Partly because life appears to me such a curious and wonderful thing that it seems a pity that even such a humble and uneventful life as mine should pass altogether away without some such record as this, and partly too because I think the record may amuse and interest some who come after me’.

Plomer said that he had had all the twenty-two notebooks typed out in full when they came into his possession, but an examination of the remaining original books shows some passages are marked with red pen; they were the pieces Plomer did not use in the edited volume.Kilvert was born on 3 December 1840 at The Rectory, Hardenhuish Lane, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, to the Rev. This newly edited selection, based on the work of his editor William Plomer, offers all the variety of Kilvert’s delightful prose, and includes his descriptions of travels to places such as Bath, Bristol, Cornwall, Liverpool, London and Worcester and his encounters with interesting people of his era, whether known only in their community or nationwide. Many people were openly stripping on the sands a little further on and running down into the sea and I would have done the same but I had brought down no towels of my own". Kilvert is so lovely and enjoys his life to crying at the beauty of it - all the pretty children he loves and the trees and fields he loves and his funny welsh parishioners who tell him such great stories.

You know that weird, poignant vibe you get from old photos—all those smiling people, so interesting and life-like, and all so dead, dead, dead? The Reverend Francis Kilvert kept a diary from January 1870 for nine years until his premature death.

It's an actually lived version of some charming, fascinating rural material more usually seen in fiction, and Kilvert is so much like both a real three-dimensional person (being a real person and all) and a stereotypical Victorian in some respects. This new edition of William Plomer’s original selection contains new archival material as well as a fascinating introduction illuminating Kilvert’s world and the history of the diaries.

I know not why I was so happy, nor what I was expecting, but I was in a delirium of joy, it was one of the supreme few moments of existence, a deep delicious draught from the strong sweet cup of life. I found this book/diary incredibly interesting, it helped that I knew many of the areas spoken about around Clyro and Bredwardine. The third notebook was given to a Mr Harvey from Birmingham who had corresponded with her for some time. So there are a lot of impassioned descriptions of pretty women where the poor guy’s longing is embarrassingly obvious.Francis Kilvert also published pleasant but conventional poetry, republished by the Kilvert Society in Collected verse : 3rd December 1840 - 23rd September 1879 by the Reverend Francis Kilvert in 1968. He was educated privately in Bath by his uncle, Francis Kilvert, before going up to Wadham College, Oxford.