Barclay Fox's Journal - Hardcover

Barclay Fox

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713518650 ISBN 13: 9780713518658

Publisher: Bell & Hyman, 1979

Synopsis

Barclay Fox's Journal

About this title

About the Author

Barclay Fox's diaries, from 1832 until his marriage in 1844, were first published in 1979 to great acclaim, as it was immediately recognised that his daily record of life in early 19th century England amounted to much more than provincial jottings. His membership of the Quaker Fox family of Falmouth, Cornwall, with its wide involvement in the mining and iron industries, in shipping and in the early days of the railway, brought him into close contact with many of the most interesting and prominent characters of the age, such as John Stuart Mill, the political economist, Thomas Carlyle, the writer and historian, and Barclay's own closest friend, William E. Forster, who became a great Liberal statesman. This new edition publishes for the first time the ten further years of Barclay Fox's Journal, taking the story up until six months before his premature death at the age of 37 in March 1855. It is fascinating both in its details of his domestic life following his marriage and in its coverage of a particularly eventful period in European history, which saw the tragedy of the Irish potato famine, the turbulent Year of Revolutions in 1848 and the outbreak of the Crimean War. Barclay Fox emerges vividly from these pages as a loyal and likeable friend and family man, a considerate and philanthropic employer, and as a humane and responsible citizen whose active Quakerism gave him a broadness of tolerance and opinions which were in many ways far ahead of his time.

From the Back Cover

Barclay Fox covered a great deal of ground. From his home in Falmouth, Cornwall, he engaged in shipping, fishing, mining, foundry management, farming, railways. He was constantly on the move, on horseback, by carriage and coach and frequently by coastal steamer.
And yet he had time to engage in an intimate and extended family life. Related to other prominent Quaker families, the Fox family settled in Cornwall in the 17th century. Barclay Fox's diaries offer an energetic and humane account of the early Victorian Fox family members, their business and home lives, their pleasures and their Quaker integrity and their wide and distinguished connections in society, literature and science.
The late Professor R.L. Brett edited the previously unpublished manuscript of Barclay Fox's diaries. Since its first publication, new material has come to light and is published in this edition for the first time. The introduction has been revised, updated and supplemented by Charles Fox. Bert Biscoe provides an introduction setting this new edition in the context of Cornwall then and now.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bell & Hyman
• Publication date: 1979
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0713518650
• ISBN 13: 9780713518658
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 426
• Editor: R L Brett