Janet Harden
Scottish diarist
Janet "Jessy" Harden, n. Allan (25 February 1776 to c.1837) was a Scottish diarist who wrote 32 small volumes, considered exclusive documentations of the Edinburgh New Town society. Her diaries cover the period from 1804 to 1811. Her writing described the daily life of her family's affairs to update her sister, Agnes Ranken, who was living in India with her husband.
Biography
Harden was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 25 February 1776. Her father, Robert Allan, was a banker, and the owner of the newspaper Caledonian Mercury. Her mother was Margaret Learmonth.
Harden and her husband John lived for some time at Brathay Hall near Ambleside in Cumbria, England, renting it from Henry Law who had inherited it in 1802 on the death of his father, George Law, its builder. Their guests there included Wordsworth, Coleridge and Constable, and the lounge bar of the hall, now an educational and holiday centre, is named "The Harden Bar" in their memory. The British Museum has an 1806 drawing by John Harden described as "Portrait group of five figures, including John Constable making a drawing of Jessy Harden; five figures seated around table at Brathay Hall".
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q116481468. VIAF identifies the subject as 192145541832296600633. The Library of Congress control number is no2016009007. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1776, 1837, 1804 and 1811.
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This entry incorporates text from “Janet Harden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.