William Holland
Encyclopedia
Vicar
In the broadest sense, a vicar is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior . In this sense, the title is comparable to lieutenant...
of Over Stowey
Over Stowey
Over Stowey is a small village and civil parish in the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, South West England. It sits in the foothills of the Quantock Hills, just below Nether Stowey and north-west of Bridgwater...
, Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...
. In a similar fashion to the diary of Thomas Turner
Thomas Turner (diarist and shopkeeper)
Thomas Turner was a shopkeeper in East Hoathly, Sussex, England. He is now most widely known for his diary....
, Holland's diary is a personal consideration of the workings of country life during a time of considerable national tension. The diary is broad in scope, with limited discussion of national events such as the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
occurring alongside treatment of local matters. Not all of the diary's original 99 volumes survive; particularly, entries written both before and after the current known time-span of the diary are thought to have existed.
Extracts from Holland's diary were published by C.F. Johnston in 1984. In 2003, the book Paupers & Pig Killers: The Diary of William Holland, ed. Jack Ayres, was published by Sutton Publishing.