Introduction

Summaries of the content of the diaries, and of events between surviving volumes of the diaries, are followed by an outline of the main themes: political alignments and subsidies of local newspapers into the 1890s, changes in journalism such as the rise of sports reporting, historical writing in the local press and the middle-class experience of ageing and retirement. The second half of this introduction is a comparison of Hewitson’s diaries with those of another provincial journalist, Alfred George Gardiner (1865–1946), who worked for the Bournemouth Directory and Northern Daily Telegraph in Blackburn, Lancashire, for most of the time he kept a diary, 1886 to 1903; he went on to edit the London Daily News. This comparison highlights their differing personalities, interests and careers.