With 8 Plates in Colour And 19 Illustrations in Black & White Miss Kate O'Brien - brilliant Irish novelist and critic - is renowned for her wit, sensibility and fine discriminating style. These qualities make her particularly suited to write on English Diaries and Journals. Her approach to the subject is provocative - "the best English Diaries have been written by bores"; it challenges established reputations and singles out for praise others who have remained comparatively obscure. Pepys and Evelyn are shrewdly appraised; also the individual qualities of Wesley's Journal, the Woodforde family Journals and the diaries of the fascinating Fanny Burney and of that remarkable man Francis Kilvert; among contemporary journals, those of Scott, Barbellion and Katherine Mansfield figure prominently. Miss O'Brien is highly critical of her subject but her sympathies are lively and she is always ready to be amused and to amuse her reader. This is a book to be read for the quality of its writing and criticism as well as for the able and informative analysis of individual writers.