A Small History of My Life to My Children
The Memoir of Richard Emmett, a Victorian Soldier
A rare first-person account by a nineteenth-century working man.
Richard Emmett wrote his memoir for his children in the 1880s. Born into a precarious working-class family in Salford, he became a rank-and-file soldier and recorded a life shaped by poverty, mobility, military discipline, family responsibility and endurance. This edition preserves his voice while providing the context needed to understand the world he inhabited.
Why I returned to this memoir
Richard Emmett is the author of the memoir; my role is that of editor and introducer. I returned to the text because voices like his survive far less often than those of officers, politicians, clergymen or prosperous householders. Emmett was a self-educated rank-and-file soldier writing for his own children, not for publication or reputation. That makes the document valuable precisely because it records a life from below in the writer’s own terms.
The purpose of the second edition was not to improve Emmett’s prose or make him sound more literary. It was to make the document easier to understand while keeping the core memoir intact. My guiding principle was to clarify, not rewrite.
Editorial approach
The edition separates the surviving first-person memoir from the editorial framework around it. An introduction, background material and notes place Emmett within the industrial world of Salford, military service and later family life, but they are not substitutes for his testimony. Where modern readers need explanation, I provide context; where Emmett speaks clearly for himself, I leave him to do so.
Why the source matters
Emmett’s account preserves the texture of an ordinary nineteenth-century life: insecurity, movement, work, military discipline, domestic responsibility and the desire to leave a record for the next generation. Its importance does not depend on its author having been famous. It lies in the survival of a working man’s own explanation of the life he believed worth remembering.
How it fits into my wider work
This volume connects closely with my interest in overlooked lives and working-class history. It also represents a different kind of historical responsibility from biography: rather than reconstructing a life mainly from external records, the task is to preserve and contextualise a voice that has already survived.
Publication details
- Author of the memoir: Richard Emmett
- Edited and introduced by: Antony David Davies
- Second edition: 2026
- Formats: Kindle and paperback
Read A Small History of My Life to My Children
Richard Emmett’s memoir, edited and introduced with historical context, is available in paperback and Kindle editions.