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Joseph Jenkins (diarist)

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Joseph Jenkins (1818-1898) was an educated tenant farmer from Tregaron, Ceredigion, mid-Wales who, when aged over 50, suddenly deserted his home and large family to seek his fortune in Australia. He was a consistent diarist for most of his life and achieved fame posthumously from publication of some excerpts of his Australian writings. The compiler, his grandson Dr William Evans, a Harley Street cardiologist, coined the title Diary of a Welsh Swagman[1] by which name he is familiar to generations of Victorian school students for whom the book has been a prescribed history text since 1978.[2]

References

  1. ^ Evans, William Diary of a Welsh Swagman (MacMillan, Melbourne 1975, Reprinted by Sun Books 1977- )
  2. ^ Phillips, Bethan Pity the Swagman (Cymdeithas Lifrau Ceredigion Gyf., Aberystwyth 2001)