ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Inchbald kept her diary of 1780 (designated Folger M. a. 150) in THE LADIES’ Own Memorandum-Book: OR, DAILY POCKET JOURNAL, For the YEAR 1780, published yearly in London by G. Robinson, No. 25, Paternoster Row, and T. Slack, Newcastle. The cost of the book was one shilling. The title page describes the journal as being ‘Designed as a Methodical Register of all their Transactions of Business, as well as Amusement’, and is announced as being written ‘By a LADY’. The 1780 journal consists of seventy-eight unnumbered leaves (the book originally had a few more pages) and is bound in a brown leather cover with a line impressed around the edges of the leather. The back cover is a pocket, although the top and bottom of the pocket have detached from the exterior cover. The pocketbook measures roughly 12.5 cm in length by 8 cm in width by 1.3 cm in thickness. This pocketbook is extremely fragile and (as of 2007) is held together with a Mylar overwrap. The cover has detached from the bulk of the pages, although a few of the pages still adhere to the front cover, which is attached to the back cover only by about 4 cm of leather at the bottom. Moreover, the cover is flaking away at the edges. At some point, the year 1780 was written in ink on the front and back covers, where it remains barely legible.
