Henry Michell's diary offers new insights into 19th-century Horsham. His attitudes and aspirations show the Victorian middle-class environment in which he lived. His interests ranged over the major issues of as well as upon subject matter of more immediate relevance to Sussex. The book will thus be of interest to historians and to a reading public that enjoys social history and biographical literature. The scope of the diary and Michell's life embraces the Corn Law controversy, the railway 'mania', the American Civil War, Parliamentary reform, and the Great Exhibition of 1851.