John Toman – författare

'Why do I keep this voluminous journal?' - Francis Kilvert asked himself. 'Partly because life appears to me such a curious and wonderful thing that it almost seems a pity that even such a humble and uneventful life as mine should pass all together away without some such record as this...' Kilvert's Diary was an effort to tell the story of his life as well as to picture rural society, which Victorians were prone to idealise. Kilvert's loving portraits of landscapes and country characters were often juxtaposed with the grimmest scenes of squalor and suffering. John Toman presents here the first thorough examination of Kilvert's writing and offers a complete revaluation of the man and his work, tracing the literary and religious influences that brought him to write in the way that he did. This study takes account of Kilvert's education at his uncle's school, his reading of travel guides, and his devotion to such figures as Wordsworth, William Barnes, and the Revd. Frederick Robertson, his visits to key locations, his parochial work, the role played by Romanticism and Evangelicalism in his outlook, and the significance of walking as the driving force of his writing. For those unfamiliar with the Diary, Kilvert's Diary and Landscape is an ideal introduction; it will also take those who already know and love Kilvert back to his diary with renewed interest and deepened insight. This new study has much to offer readers interested in cultural and landscape history, literature, religion and the Victorian period.'It is hoped that this study of Kilvert and landscape, which may be regarded as the second part of a revaluation of the diarist that began with my Kilvert: The Homeless Heart (2001), contributes to our appreciation of his complexity.'From the author's introduction.

Kilvert's World of Wonders takes a fresh look at the Victorian era, one that does not turn away from the smoke stacks and crowded streets of popular imagining, but which sees them from the distance of the rural countryside. Though a countryman and lover of country ways, here the well know diarist is shown to be deeply stirred by what he saw as a society being changed and improved by science, technology, and by the liberal, enlightened ideas that were starting to circulate. The social changes seen by Kilvert resonated with the vision of progress that was imbued in him by his Victorian upbringing, and as a result his diaries can be seen as a response to these changes and not, as previous Kilvert scholarship suggests, as a simple record of country life.Toman's new work goes beyond the biographical and social realities of Kilvert's family by comparing them to almost twenty other middle-class families in order to show common factors in the familial experience of a rapidly changing society. At the heart of this re-evaluation of Kilvert's life and times is the theme of Wonder, various aspects of which are explored throughout. Away from the rapidly growing urban centres the effects of industrialisation are seen in a surprisingly positive light by Francis Kilvert, a fervent Christian coming to terms with the encroachments that science, scepticism and secularism were making upon religious faith and yet seeing all around him a 'world of wonders'.