Education, Family, and a Divided Country
Period: 1637–1649
Youthful study, illness, travel and public ceremony are framed by Evelyn’s deeply situated political and religious perspective.
Literary reading guide
The early pages carry the reader through formative encounters with people, institutions and places. Travel supplies a changing setting, but it also gives the writer a way to register comparisons. Notice how a diary can work as a portable record of material objects, ceremonies, architecture and customs, rather than only a report of private feeling.
For a contemporary journal, try keeping a brief inventory of a place before describing what you felt there. What was being built, repaired, argued over or celebrated? A useful personal record retains some evidence of the world that produced an impression. Remember, too, that this published diary underwent retrospective revision; its written voice is not always an untouched same-day note.
Excerpts from this period
Short excerpts from the public-domain edition named on the guide page. An excerpt that ends mid-sentence is an excerpt, not a whole entry.
22 January 1638
I would needs be admitted into the dancing and vaulting schools
Study includes bodily accomplishments and youthful appetite for activity. Source edition
13 April 1638
My father ordered that I should begin to manage my own expenses, which till then my tutor had done; at which I was much satisfied.
A personal financial milestone appears without a retrospective life lesson. Source edition
14 January 1639
I came back to Oxford, after my tedious indisposition, and to the infinite loss of my time
Illness is experienced partly as an interruption to study. Source edition
10 June 1640
I repaired with my brother to the term, to go into our new lodgings
Accommodation and travel are recurring units of the record. Source edition
7 July 1640
My brother George and I, understanding the peril my father was in upon a sudden attack of his infirmity, rode post from Guildford toward him
The report of a family emergency uses the same logistical precision as a journey. Source edition
4 January 1644
It is certain he was an excellent disputant, and so strangely given to it that nothing could pass him.
Evelyn’s portraits of other people are judgements, entered as briskly as the weather. Source edition
An essay by the TAEONIA editors. Quotations are limited to texts in the public domain.