ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Wynne, later the wife of Thomas Fremantle, was an avid diarist, beginning at age 11 and running to 41 volumes. Some diaries also survive for her younger sisters Eugenia and Harriet. Most of the originals survive, and they were also edited and printed in the 1930s. The excerpts below are taken from the printed volumes, which selected key passages and combined entries from the three sisters. The Wynne family were an English Roman Catholic gentry family, who moved to the continent after the family estate got into financial difficulties. The French Revolution occurred when Wynne was in her earlier teens and her diary records the family’s responses to events as they hear the news – often several days or weeks after they occur – while living in St Gallen, Switzerland. Living with other elite families, many of whom were exiles from the French royal court, the source provides important insight into the anxiety and grief of the social elite as they watched their authority dismantled and some of their friends lose their lives. Written by a teenager, they also give insight into how her emotional responses were constructed in relation to her friends, families and other interests.
