Frederic Madden's Journal

Frederic Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum from 1837 to 1866, kept an extraordinarily detailed daily record of his social, professional, emotional and sexual life over more than half a century. Written with irresistible wit and candour, Madden’s journal reveals him to be a memorable character of contrasts: moving in the highest circles of society while labouring nightly at a series of pioneering editions of medieval texts, and a devoted family man who feuded incessantly with his colleagues at the British Museum. Madden was an admirer of the diary of Samuel Pepys, and the literary quality of his own journal puts it in the same class.

The previously unpublished journal of one of the most colourful intellectual figures of the nineteenth century is a great but little-known treasure of the Bodleian Library. Deftly edited into a single volume by Guy Philipps, this self-portrait of an eminent Victorian is sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, often moving, and always fascinating.