[1][2][3] Mary Hardy spent nearly half her life in the small village of Whissonsett, in central Norfolk, where her father Robert Raven was a grocer, maltster and later a farmer.

[4][5] Her husband William Hardy was born on 26 January 1732 at Scotton, near Knaresborough, in the West Riding of Yorkshire; he died 18 August 1811 at his daughter's farmhouse at Sprowston, near Norwich, Norfolk.

His official duties brought him into contact with maltsters, brewers, tanners and other rural manufacturers; his wife seems to have been most at ease with this "middling-sort" class, and they had few gentry friends.

This navigable river linked them to the sea at Great Yarmouth: cargo vessels, the keels and wherries, sailed deep inland along the network of the Broads.

This was a period when wholesale brewers were busy acquiring retail outlets, and she charts the gradual process of tying pubs in these comparatively early days.

The small, versatile brewery workforce worked very long hours to perform all the stages of production to create the pint of beer served at the public house.

Through covering such subjects as distribution, by road, river and sea, she brings us close to the lives of working people; innkeepers and labourers feature daily at times.

In 1804 the diarist's son William Hardy Jr. (1770–1842) lost his small trading ship, a sloop named Nelly, in a storm off Blakeney; the captain and crew all drowned.

[4][5] In particular the diary reveals a completely different way of life from that described in vivid detail by Mary Hardy's famous contemporary and fellow Norfolk diarist, the Revd James Woodforde, based in his parsonage less than 20 miles (32 km) away from the two villages where she wrote her own journal.

[4][5][7] The diary ranges exceptionally widely as the family were engaged in so many activities, from garden development and estate acquisition to politics and the defence of their home area during wartime invasion threats.