Catherine Hutton's Travel Diary (1779)

Abstract The only diary the author Catherine Hutton (1756–1846) is known to have kept is her travel diary, written in 1779 at the age of 23, in which she describes staying with various members of her extended family and friends while travelling around the Midlands. Her trip starts from her home in Birmingham and takes her through much of Derbyshire, with visits to Leicester and Nottingham towards the end of the journey. The diary offers a rich and vivid account of the sociability of a female member of the middling class, and of the trials that could involve, and sheds light both on Hutton's earlier life, and on the conventions and social mores of the time. The introduction contextualizes the journal and points to some of the challenges in exactly how it might be read.