Although her works did not reach print during her lifetime, indeed were never intended to be published, Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker was among the most prolific of eighteenth-century North American women writers. Entry after entry in her diary notes cryptically that she found herself "in the reading and writing humour" or that she "spent this Afternoon up stairs writing." A woman of means, Drinker was able to cultivate her writing habit regularly from the 1750s until a week before her death in 1807. The resulting body of diaries, letters, and papers runs to thousands of pages. The 1991 complete edition of the diary gives the reader access to nearly 2,100 densely packed pages of Drinker's running commentary on family, friends, region, and nation.

At least since 1955, when Drinker's diary was placed on deposit at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, scholars have recognized the importance of these documents. The diary is the most...