England Finding Personal Writings and Biographies (National Institute)

Useful Literature
Another genre of useful books is the history derived from a personal diary or experiences, for example:


 * Gough’s History of Myddle (Shropshire) 1701.
 * Hudson’s A Shepherd’s Life in 19th century Wiltshire.
 * Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford of 19th-20th century Oxfordshire.
 * Blythe’s Akenfield concerning 20th century Suffolk.
 * Audrey James’ Memoirs of a Fen Tiger.

These are derivative accounts, and most would contain secondary information.

It is then but a short step to the well-researched historical novel which can vividly assist us understand the times through which our ancestors lived. Some examples are:


 * Du Maurier’s tales of Cornwall such as The House on the Strand, (a tale of the Middle Ages) and the smuggling novel Jamaica Inn.
 * Rutherfurd’s epics Sarum (10,000 years around Salisbury, Wiltshire) andLondon (2,000 years of London’s history).
 * Charles Dickens tales - many are set mainly in London but there are rural episodes too. The workings of the nineteenth century poor laws are clearly in evidence.
 * H.G. Wells stories of the middle and lower classes.
 * Thomas Hardy’s stories of ‘Wessex’ i.e. Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset.
 * The Brontës novels set mainly in Yorkshire.
 * Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Dynasty series.
 * Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie.
 * Winston Graham’s Poldark books set in Cornwall.
 * Sara Fraser’s tales of underpriviliged women in the Midlands 1820-1832 entitled Tildy, Poorhouse Woman, Nursing Woman, Pointing Woman, Radical Woman, Gang Woman, Widow Woman, and Invincible Woman.

Biography and Autobiography
Biographies of the rich and famous are common and easily found on public library shelves. Autobiography, or memoirs done by the subject themselves sometimes with the aid of a ghost writer, is a smaller genre but perhaps more fruitful for ordinary people.

Biographical dictionaries abound for every field of human endeavour, and most countries now have a DNB (Dictionary of National Biography). The first British DNB was published between 1884 and 1900 as Biographica Britannia. There have been several supplements and the DNB is now on CD-ROM where it is searchable also by locality to find all the great and good associated with any particular place – a great boon for local and family historians (Gurnett 1997). Note that this is the Old DNB; there is a new one to be published in September 2004 in 60 volumes and simultaneously online which Baigent previews.

The new edition is to be called the Oxford DNB and information about this mammoth project is at. Another reliable source is Williams, Smyth and Kirby for early British biographies c500-c1050, and Keats-Rohan describes the prosopographical (early biographical) database for landowners after the Norman conquest 1066-1166.

The standard biographical reference source for British royalty is by Williamson. The latest research on British and European royal lines is summarized regularly in Genealogists’ Magazine by Bierbrier and critical reviews of new books on the subject published, a good example is by Wood. These articles can be accessed through the index compiled by Leeson and Webb.

The British Biographical Archive is a one-alphabet compilation of 324 of the most important English-language biographical reference works published from 1601 to 1929. It contains 300,000 articles about 170,000 people and is on fiches 6029709-35 + 6066966. Series II, mainly 20th century material on 150,000 persons from 268 reference works, is on fiche 6140788-814 (review by Titford 1995). The FHLC indicates which letters are in which sets so the Request for Photocopies method can be used to get specific names.

The Biography Database 1680-1830 gives names and details extracted from directories, subscription lists and Gentleman’s Magazine (Tyrwhitt-Drake).

Bibliographies of biographies can be found in print, for example the several volumes of BGMI (Biography and Genealogy Master Index edited by Herbert and McNeil) indexing over 11 million from over 900 biographical dictionaries. The most up-to-date version is available on CD by Ancestry.com and many others are on line.

Finding Personal Writings
There is much of value lying unknown and disregarded in attics, and even uncatalogued in archives, and new discoveries are turning up continually:


 * Ask every member of your family.
 * Find the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th cousins especially those descended from those who moved away from the old country.
 * Consult local archives in the areas in which they lived to see if someone has deposited something. For example the Kent Virtual Archives has examples of its material online, including an 1822 letter of pardon from George III for Mary Drury, and a touching letter from Roger Horncastle to his sweetheart, Dorothy, explaining that he cannot marry her today!
 * Consult owners of old houses and other buildings associated with ancestors—attics may not have been thoroughly cleaned out and even building alterations have yielded long-hidden documents.
 * Searches online can be very productive in ferreting out diaries and letters.
 * Periodic checks of online auction houses, or registering surname interests with them can also produce the occasional family nugget.
 * Contact the local village historian and/or local history society who will know what is available but unknown outside the area.
 * Join the local family history society whose journal will apprise you of recent discoveries.
 * Advertise in the local paper for such diaries and letters.
 * Don’t forget to look for collections of old postcards in your family; see later section under photographs.
 * Contact the local solicitors to see what they have stored in their basement, (and encourage them to deposit material with the local archives).
 * On the FHLC diaries and letters can be found with various searches

SURNAME SEARCH TITLE SEARCH with place and diary/diaries PLACE SEARCH under COUNTRY, COUNTY or TOWN using subheadings of BIOGRAPHY, HISTORY or SOCIAL LIFE and CUSTOMS


 * A great number of diaries have been deposited in the British Library.
 * The County Record Societies may have lists such as the Checklist of Unpublished Diaries by Londoners and Visitors(Creaton), which is a guide to and bibliography of little-used sources for the social history of London from collections world-wide.

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