Ellen Weeton
簡介
Miss Weeton's Journal was warmly received when discovered and first published in two volumes in 1936 and 1939, and has often been referred to and quoted for its useful source material since then. But with growing interest in the industrial revolution, particularly as it affected the lives of individual men and women, this new edition with an introduction by J.J. Bagley seems assured of a wider readership.
The work is a combination of melodrama such as might be found in the most sentimental novel of the date and of objective reporting on social and economic conditions. It is obviously the latter that makes it worth republishing, though even the social historian solely in search of factual material will find it hard to skip some of the dramatic personal episodes Miss Weeton relates in a forceful and sometimes spiteful nature in her journal and her letters (copied painstakingly into letter books). When playing the part of reporter, she provides fascinating details about many everyday things, such as the conditions under which governesses worked, life in Liverpool while the City was taking root, passenger travel on canal boats, and early tourism. Most of the action takes place in Upholland, Liverpool and Wigan but there are also visits for work or pleasure to the Lake District, North Wales, the Isle of Man, and London–and the reader quickly discovers that Miss Weeton was no ordinary traveller or visitor.
[Description from inside cover of the 1969 edition.]
This book was first published under the title of 'Miss Weeton' by the OUP in 1936. This edition includes additional material in the epilogue, and an additional introduction by J.J. Bagley.