Two Yorkshire Diaries: The Diary of Arthur Jessop and Ralph Ward's Journal

These diaries by Ralph Ward (fl. 1754–6) and Arthur Jessop (1682–1751) were first published in 1952 and paint a valuable portrait of the trials, tribulations and pleasures of everyday life for the middle classes in rural Yorkshire in the mid-eighteenth century. A transcription of Jessop's diary from 1861 was first discovered in a Huddersfield bookshop in 1927. A local apothecary and pious community man, Jessop depicts the cycles of life in West Yorkshire, displaying a very British preoccupa...