For correct presentation and full functionality,
this website requires Javascript to be enabled in your browser.
If your browser cannot or does not support Javascript,
you will not be able to see the pages as they should be presented,
and you will find it much more difficult (if not impossible) to navigate between pages.
Photographs
Contact us
Research updates
Site Map
When was it written?
As has been mentioned before, it's quite possible that the diary was written over a much longer period than one year and may have been concatenated into its current format by Jeanne Preston for publication purposes. The 1796 - 1797 caption may be from another set of covers used to bind the book or they may refer to one part only of the Diary. The days of the week and months, for the most part do not fit these years. However, there was a brief window in time when London ladies of fashion are mentioned dying their hair with turmeric, and this was 1782. This fashion was presumably so short-lived because of the likely effect of rain on a lady's hair releasing the dye in a stream of yellow all over her clothes. Anne Hughes records she was pleased to find her friend Lady Susan, on returning from London, had not dyed her hair yellow. So it is reasonable to suggest a connection between this diary entry and the year 1782. Frances and Adele, who discovered this, then went on to compare some of the diary dates with the calendar for 1782 and noticed that many more days matched.
Next
