Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's personal diaries

This section contains personal diaries kept by Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury between the years immediately prior to her marriage to George Cadbury (1839-1922) and her death in December 1951. Each diary contains dated entries providing brief accounts of Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's daily activities including her participation in public philanthropic work, her attendance at social functions, her relationships with prominent public figures and her involvement with the Religious Society of Friends. The diaries typically feature detailed entries about important family events such as the birth of her first son Laurence John Cadbury in 1889 and the death of her husband George Cadbury in October 1922. Diary entries also include Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's personal comments about the weather, family health, social acquaintances and public events.

Diaries kept during the early twentieth century typically cover one year. However, after receiving a Walker's 'Year by Year' diary as a gift in 1913, Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury frequently recorded her daily activities in similar diaries which incorporate a page for each day of the year with room for entries over a period of five years for each date. As well as the daily entries themselves, it is interesting that many of the diaries include loose items inserted between their pages. Additional items enclosed within Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's diary for 1921-1925 are particularly intriguing, including a collection of small family photographs and examples of both private and public correspondence.

A number of Taylor Cadbury's diaries feature annotations and page markers which were added to the diaries at a later date. In her diary dated 1902 entries relating to the establishment of Woodbrooke have been underlined in red and marked with a piece of newspaper dating from the 1920s. Drawing on this, it is possible to suggest that Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury revisited her diaries to assist her in writing public addresses or to reminisce about important experience and achievements in her life. In addition, filed alongside these diaries are a number of folders featuring typed extracts taken from the diaries relating to Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's attendance at Yearly Meeting and family Christmasses during the 1880s and 1890s. The compilation of these extracts suggests that Taylor Cadbury's diaries functioned as records of family life, reflecting Taylor her concern to collect and preserve accounts relating to the life of the Taylor and Cadbury families.

Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's use of her personal diaries to record important events such as foreign travel, the accomplishment of projects and family births and deaths in evident throughout this section. However, it is significant that Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's diary for 1896 features markers added by her biographer, Richenda Scott, suggesting that Scott used the diaries to write her biography of Taylor Cadbury during the early 1950s. This demonstrates the importance of Taylor Cadbury's personal diaries as a source for understanding and interpreting her life and work.

The early years of Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury's personal diary for 1881-1888 have been catalogued in depth here to provide an insight into the detailed content featured in her diaries. Entries for subsequent diaries provide information about the dates covered by each volume, remarking on any notable features about the document or the entries included within each diary. Owing to the level of detail of content included within each diary readers are advised to consult the documents in person to learn more.

Finding number: MS 466/205/1-34