Diary of a Provincial Lady is not only a funny, insightful series of novels: it’s a record of life in the early 1930s and first few months of the Second World War. E. M. Delafield includes so much detail and texture of daily life in her book that it’s a valuable source that can help us understand the times she lived in.
So if you’ve ever wanted to know what the Provincial Lady thinks about advertising, dustbins or zoos, or you’d like to see a list all in one place of her evening dresses, the index will help you find it.
Real people, places, books and films have all been indexed, as have fictional characters.
References are to the dates of entries, rather than page numbers, so the index will be useable with any editions. Dates appear in the format YY/MM/DD. Not all volumes of the Diary specify the year, so I have assumed these where necessary. The volumes are distinguished by letter prefixes:
A: Diary of a Provincial Lady (29/11/07-30/10/19)
B: The Provincial Lady Goes Further (31/06/09-32/07/13)
C: The Provincial Lady in America (33/07/07-33/12/07)
D: The Provincial Lady in War-time (39/09/01-39/11/21)
Some dates have two entries linked together by the abbreviation “cont” in the text. In The Provincial Lady in War-time, there appears to be an error in the dating, with two separate unlinked entries for 23 September 1939. These have been distinguished in the index by suffixes (i) and (ii).