The Diary of Elizabeth Lee: Growing Up on Merseyside in the Late Nineteenth Century

Personal diaries provide rare glimpses into those aspects of the past that are usually hidden from view. Elizabeth Lee grew up on Merseyside in the late nineteenth century. She began her diary at the age of 16 in 1884 and it provides an unbroken record until the age of 25 in 1892. Elizabeth's father was a draper and outfitter with shops in Birkenhead, and throughout the period of the diary Elizabeth lived at home with her family in Prenton. However, she travelled widely on both sides of the Mersey and the diary provides an unusually revealing picture of middle-class life that begins to challenge some conventional views of the position of young women in Victorian society. The includes a detailed introduction to and analysis of the diary, together with a glossary relating to key people in the diary, a time line relating events in the diary to a wider context, and maps of the localities in which Elizabeth lived her everyday life. There have been a number of diaries published relating to 'ordinary' people, but most accounts were written as life histories, late in life, by people who eventually gained some degree of fame or prominence in society. This very rare firsthand account provides a unique insight into adolescent life in Victorian Britain.