The Rev. Joseph Romilly (1791–1864) was a bachelor clergyman of the Church of England, a Fellow of Trinity College, and from 1832 to 1861, Registrary of the University of Cambridge. He kept a regular diary from 1829 to his death, and this selection, introduced and edited by J. P. T. Bury, covers the years 1832–1842. Romilly was a cultured and travelled man of means; he met many of the ablest scholars and leaders of his day, and was a welcome guest in great houses. This volume, which begins in the year of Romilly's election as Registrary, is a unique record of Cambridge before the Royal Commission of 1852, with many valuable sidelights on nineteenth-century society and on intellectual life – or the more relaxed side of it.