Photograph of a page from the Greigston diary, 14 - 21 April 1827
Farming in the 19th century
The e-book of the title is the story of a diary – in both senses. It comprises the transcript of this pre-Victorian farm diary, and an introduction aimed at setting the journal into its context of place and time. The diary is owned by Mr and Mrs Tom Grant, who farm Greigston today. It is a record of practices and procedures on the farm, but also offers glimpses of family joys and sorrows, the social networks and the wider issues of the time – from agricultural improvement to a cholera epidemic. In this article I will briefly describe what sort of things the diary tells us, focusing on the entries on the illustrated page (figure 1) opposite as examples.