"Make every day your Ephemerides". The preacher and the early modern diary

ABSTRACT: Ephemerides was a widely understood term in early modern Protestant Europe for a diary with a high moral purpose. Some, predominantly Puritan, diarists devoted themselves to regular examinations of conscience; others to describing  episodes or states of being which they attributed to the intervention of divine providence; others, simply to recording the events of a life well lived, as offerings to themselves, to posterity or to an all-seeing, all-judging God. The word Ephemerides came from Plutarch's life of Alexander the Great, in which it meant the daily chronicle of his doings, compiled by his secretary.  I shall examine the religious and other influences that led to the revival of the term, and its international currency and various uses from the late 16th to the mid-17th century.

I studied History at Somerville College, Oxford and have a Ph.D in History from University College London. I have worked as an archivist, a manuscript cataloguer and an editorial and lexicographical researcher, and my books and articles reflect diverse interests, from diaries to food history to literary and historical biography. My two most recent books are Peter Levi, Oxford Romantic (Signal Books, 2014) and George and Emily Eden: Pride, Privilege, Empire and the Whigs (Lutterworth, 2024).