Catherine Exley's Diary: The Life and Times of an Army Wife in the Peninsular War - Softcover

Probert, Rebecca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 095638479X ISBN 13: 9780956384799

Publisher: Brandram, 2014

Synopsis

Catherine Exley was born in Leeds in 1779. Aged thirty, she boarded a ship and sailed for Portugal. Her memoir of the years she spent following the 34th Regiment is unique, the only first-hand account of the Peninsular War by the wife of a common British soldier. Published shortly after her death as a booklet which has since been lost, Catherine’s diary survived in a local newspaper of 1923 to be rediscovered by her great-great-great-grandson. It is difficult today to comprehend the hardships Catherine endured: of her twelve children, three died as infants while with her on the march; her clothes, ‘covered with filth and vermin’, often went unchanged for weeks at a time, and she herself more than once almost died from illness and starvation; shocked at the mutilation inflicted by muskets and cannons, she still had the composure to manhandle blackened corpses upon a battlefield in search of her missing husband when hardened soldiers could no longer stomach the task. Her diary is reproduced here along with chapters which bear upon Catherine’s experiences in Spain and Portugal, and which put her life and writings in their social context.

About this title

About the Author

Rebecca Probert is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, teaching family law and child law. She has published widely on both modern family law and its history.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brandram
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 095638479X
• ISBN 13: 9780956384799
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 152