This collection of material comprises two journals or ‘Memorandum’ books that William Upcott (1779–1845) kept between 1803 and 1809, a travel journal from 1823 describing a journey to the Peak District, and an autobiographical sketch written for his half-sister Elizabeth Peck in 1808.Footnote 1
These several manuscripts have been transcribed and edited by the three editors, in part using the handwriting recognition software developed by Transkribus, an EU-funded manuscript transcription project based at the University of Innsbruck. We are especially grateful to Johanna Walcher at Transkribus for the support she gave the project in the initial stages, and to Ed Pope who rendered considerable assistance, as only he can, in chasing down the complexities of Upcott’s extended family. We are also deeply indebted to Steven Brindle of English Heritage who read the whole manuscript with exemplary care and great expertise; to Richard Gaunt, the RHS editor, for his extensive labours; and to Jem Langworthy for his meticulous copy-editing. The University of Warwick’s URS scheme funded Aysuda Aykan and Curtis Leung, during the summers of 2021 and 2022, to work on the project, and the History Department financed some additional research for them in 2021–2022 (although in all cases both of them went over and above any call of duty).
We are grateful to the British Library; University College London (UCL); and the Huntington Library, California, for access to the material reproduced here, and especially to Alexandra Ault in the British Library, to Dan Mitchell and Katy Makin in Special Collections at UCL, and Lisa Caprino at the Huntington. We would also like to thank the Bodleian Library, Oxford; Edinburgh University Library; the Royal Society of Arts; the Royal Academy; the National Archive at Kew; the Houghton Library at Harvard University; and Adam Green, archivist at Trinity College, Cambridge, for access to material (especially during the Covid-19 epidemic). Thanks also to Liz Street at the Staffordshire Record Office, Gemma Roberts at the National Trust (Shugborough), Ivan Burgess, and the New York bookseller, Jonathan Hill.
The cover portrait of Upcott is by Thomas Bragg, after a line engraving by William Behnes, made in March 1818 and is reproduced courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG D39273).
