Ralph Josselin

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Ralph Josselin (January 23, 1616 - 1683) was the vicar of Earls Colne in Essex from 1641 until his death in 1683. He is celebrated for his remarkable diary that bears a distant similarity to that of Samuel Pepys. Josselin records intimate details of everyday farming life, family and kinship in a small, isolated rural community. Alan Macfarlane began collecting information relating to the Earls Colne and the diary while working as researcher in the Essex Record Office in the 1960s from which he and Sarah Harrison attempted to "reconstruct" an historical community. In 1970 Macfarlane published an anthropological study of Josselin's family life. A full edited transcript of the diary was published in 1991.