He then entered the Church of England and became a rural curate, working primarily in the Welsh Marches between Hereford and Hay on Wye.

There on 1 January 1870 he started a diary from which it appears that he basked in his life within the Welsh countryside, often writing several pages describing his surroundings and the parishioners that he visited.

Shortly after the rejection, in 1872, Kilvert resigned his position as curate of Clyro, and left the village, returning to his father's parish of Langley Burrell.

In August 1879 he married Elizabeth Ann Rowland (1846–1911), whom he had met on a visit to Paris, his best man was William Edward Thomas Morgan.

Published just before and during World War II, the first editions of the diaries were well received by the public when, in a period of bombing and rationing they provided an escapism back to the simpler and happier times of the mid Victorian era, still just within living memory.

In the 1950s, whilst Plomer was contemplating further publication of the remaining journals, it was found that the majority of the surviving diaries had been destroyed by their then owner, an elderly niece of Kilvert's, who claimed to have done so to protect "private family matters".

[5][6] Several modern writers have commented on passages in the diaries describing interactions with young girls which these days might raise suspicions of paedophilia.

[7][8][9] However, poet John Betjeman was among those who have since defended Kilvert, saying, "If there had been anything sinister in his attentions to them, he would hardly have written so candidly in his diary about his feelings".

[10] This led to Kilvert's Diary being dramatised (eighteen 15-minute episodes) on British television between 1977 and 1978, with Timothy Davies in the title role.