Product Description

Francis Kilvert’s diary shows a compassionate and thoughtful delight in the people and beautiful surroundings of the English countryside. With good cheer he records his loves (among them poetry and the attentions of pretty girls) and his dislikes (including a distaste for bathing in knickers that leaves more than one beach scandalized), as well as the town folklore and parishioner’s stories that his tender interest in others arouses. Heartfelt, humorous and reflective, this is a transportive glimpse of a time gone by. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside – but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land – as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man’s relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31627 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

About the Author
Francis Kilvert (1840–79) was born near Chippenham, Wiltshire. The son of a clergyman, Francis himself worked as a curate and vicar, before dying of peritonitis shortly after returning from his honeymoon. He wrote and privately published poetry, but it is for his diaries that he is remembered.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
`To be alone out of doors on a still, soft, clear, moonlit night is to me one of the greatest pleasures that this world can give'

Customer Reviews

An old fashioned taster
Based in both Wiltshire and the Welsh Boarders these extracts from the diaries of Francis Kilvert paint an intimate picture of the life of a Protestant clergymen in the 1870's and the landscape in which it occurs.

Kilvert was obviously not an introverted or closeted member of the clergy as his clear affection for pretty young women, swimming nude and parsnip wine show. However, he was clearly also more liberal minded on a number of social issues as well - he removes his hat at Stonehenge as a mark of respect and is very clear in his own mind that his life is a good deal less onerous than the people of his parish, saying his life is "a holiday and enjoyment and delight". The author seems to be able to exist in two worlds simultaneously - seeing an angel in a church in Bath, but also taking food and bandages to the dying.

By its very nature this short selection of Kilvert's diary entries is bound to be incomplete and at least one major "plot" line is left hanging in the most annoying fashion. Normally this would reduce my rating to 3 Stars, but the quality of the writing is so high and the passion that it communicates so great that the book is worth 4 Stars.

Incomplete, but highly worthwhile.