Elizabeth Baker’s Diary 1778 - 1786

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This diary is a wonderful source for eighteenth century women's history and for life in a small town in rural Wales recorded by an English exile. It is rare for anyone described as abjectly poor by her contemporaries to keep a diary but Elizabeth Baker's excellent education gave her status and value in her community. She has been described as a snob who had, as she liked to recall, dined with aristocrats in her London life, but living as she did on a level with the poor, she wrote of them with immense sympathy and understood how circumstances beyond their control could lead them to fall into the pit of poverty. Her pen could be occasionally malicious, recording the foibles of her neighbours in Dolgellau, and it is invaluable for anyone researching their family history in Merioneth.