Through England on a Side Saddle was written around 1700, and first published in full in 1888. Celia Fiennes (1662 1741) was the granddaughter of the 1st Viscount Saye and Sele. She was an enthusiastic traveller through England, both for pleasure and 'to regain my health by variety and change of aire and exercise'. The diary which she kept was intended for her family to read, and, while it lacks Defoe's more systematic approach some two decades later, sheds valuable insights into English social and economic history at the turn of the century. She was uninterested in antiquities, getting most...