Catherine Exley's Diary by Rebecca Probert

Catherine Exley's Diary by Rebecca Probert

Catherine Exley was born in Leeds in 1779. Aged thirty, she boarded a ship and sailed for Portugal. Her memoir of the years she spent following the 34th Regiment is unique, the only first-hand account of the Peninsular War by the wife of a common British soldier. Published shortly after her death as a booklet which has since been lost, Catherine s Diary survived in a local newspaper of 1923 to be rediscovered by her great-great-great-grandson. It is difficult today to comprehend the hardships Catherine endured: of her twelve children, three died as infants while with her on the march; her clothes, covered with filth and vermin, often went unchanged for weeks at a time, and she herself more than once almost died from illness and starvation; shocked at the mutilation inflicted by muskets and cannons, she still had the composure to manhandle blackened corpses upon a battlefield in search of her missing husband when hardened soldiers could no longer stomach the task. Her diary is reproduced here along with chapters which bear upon Catherine s experiences in Spain and Portugal, and which put her life and writings in their social context.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780956384799
ISBN 10	095638479X
Title	Catherine Exley's Diary
Author	Rebecca Probert
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Takeaway (Publishing)
Year published	2014-06-04
Number of pages	160
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.