Creevey and Greville
Joanna Richardson describes how the diarists of the early nineteenth century wrote some highly distinctive memoirs of politics and Court life.
The nineteenth century was the heyday of the English diarist.
When England entered the industrial age and the modern era, when social life was intense and elegant, when politics were fiercely personal, when society was rich in unforgettable characters, the memoir-writers were fortunately at work.
Captain Gronow, of the First Regiment of Foot Guards, was amassing ‘anecdotes of the camp, Court, clubs and society’.
John Wilson Croker, man of letters and Secretary to the Admiralty, was describing the vicissitudes of politics and literature in The Croker Papers.
Henry Crabb Robinson, the journalist and barrister, was hard at work on the diary which reflected civilized life in England and on the Continent. The nineteenth century is immensely rich in diaries and memoirs, in collections of papers and in excellent correspondence.
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