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This book uses diaries written by ordinary British people over the past two centuries to examine and explain the nature and extent of everyday mobilities, such as travel to school, to work, to shop or to visit friends, and to explore the meanings attached to these mobilities. After a critical evaluation of diary writing, the ways in which mobility changed over time, interacted with new forms of transport technology, and varied from place to place are examined. Further chapters focus on the roles of family and life course, gender, income and class, and journey purpose in shaping mobilities, including immobility. It is argued that easy and frequent everyday mobilities were experienced by most of the diarists studied, that travellers could exercise their own agency to adapt easily to new forms of transport technology, but that factors such as gender, class, and location also created significant mobility inequalities.

Everyday Mobilities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Diaries

1 Introduction2 The Value of Diary Writing3 Mobility Change over Time4 Location Matters5 Mobility, Family, and the Life Course6 Gendered Mobilities: The Female Experience7 Money Matters8 The Significance of Journey Purpose9 Immobility10 Conclusions