INTRODUCTION

This diary was kept by Malthus during a summer tour of the English Lake District. The diary entries cover a 26-day period, from 4 July to 29 July. The entry for the first day is not dated, but the entry for the second day is dated ‘July 5th. Sunday’.

The year is not stated, but internal evidence indicates that it was almost certainly 1795.5 July fell on a Sunday in 1789, 1795, 1801 and 1807. The first year (1789) is ruled out because he was delivering a sermon at Oakwood on 19 July 1789 (see Chapter 1, Sermon 1, above). The tour would not have been before 1789 (the year of Malthus' ordination): the following passage in the diary entry of 16 July (concerning a gentleman met at Grasmere) – ‘I rather fancy he was a brother of the trade, & travel'd in the black cloth way, but I was unwilling to ask him any questions that might lead to a discovery’ – implies that Malthus was at that time an ordained minister. Also, the statement on 10 July ‘Saw Calgarth the new house that the Bishop [Watson] has built’ dates the diary after 1789 – according to DNB, the year in which Calgarth was built. The last year (1807) is ruled out because by then Malthus was married with two children – Henry aged one and Emily aged two – and a third expected (Lucy, born December 1807).