In the summer of 2002, Katharine Kittredge was doing research in the Hampshire Record Office (Winchester, UK) when she stumbled upon a profoundly moving document: an 1807 journal describing the life and sudden death of a young child. Intrigued, she embarked on a quest to learn more about the journal’s author, the Anglo-Irish diarist Melesina Trench (1768-1827).
Professor Kittredge's twelve-year search has involved lost documents, database “irregularities,” mysterious e-mails from far-flung descendants, and the discovery of a truly bizarre work of early science fiction. It has yielded not only a full picture of a remarkable woman’s life, but also some cautionary tales about trusting archival records, databases, and the "accepted" history of an age.
Please feel free to eat your lunch during the talk.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20140413081540515