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""I should hate to live a quiet, cabbage life ... I would rather have a soul, though it must ever be hungry; I would rather live, though it means suffering""   At the age of fourteen, Mary James begins chronicling her life. For the next five years, her diary becomes her closest confidant as she finds her feet as a young woman on the busy streets of Llandaff North and Whitchurch in Cardiff. Her family are property developers and boat builders connected to the bustling Gabalfa Dock on the Glamorganshire Canal.    Family rifts and tragedies, the shortages of a world war, religion, local shops and entertainments, and a passion for education which will lead her to university: Mary James emerges as a courageous and determined voice of her age.   A stunning window into the lives and struggles of a household in Cardiff in the early 20th century, written by a young woman on the cusp of adulthood

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9781915067470

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About the author: Mary James was born on 8 July 1902 in Llandaff North, Cardiff. She was the first child of William Gwalchmai James, a building contractor, and his wife Hannah Candina, and the grandchild of a family of boatbuilders at Gabalfa Dock on the Glamorganshire Canal. She studied at Aberystwyth University. These diaries were discovered by a family member, and chronicle her life from 1916 to 1920. About the editor: Sian Jennings is a retired lawyer and freelance writer who has a Master's degree in Family and Local History and has been actively researching her Welsh roots since 1994. She is the granddaughter of Mary's cousin Madge, who is mentioned in the diary entry for 5 September 1917.

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