Westminster Council Archives Service are serialising a diary from their collections. It contains 260 days of entries, and runs from the first of January through to the twelfth of December 1846. The diary was written by Nathaniel Bryceson, a clerk in Pimlico.
The Council will be publishing the entry for each day as they occur, and promise “a rare insight into the lives and loves of a 19 year-old in the early Victorian era.” So far the first nine entries promise hints of his life, but don’t give much easy information. Essentially, the diarist is occupied by recording what he wears, what he eats, which girl he takes out, and what he buys (probably as most of us were at nineteen!).
Unfortunately he doesn’t give any background or context to the people he mentions, and don’t expect the modern diarist’s preoccupation with bad childhoods, emotions or hopes for the future – that’s not the Victorian style! But I’m going to follow it, and I think it’ll probably make an interesting read over time.
Ruth Fillery-Travis 