Francis Kilvert (1840–1879) was the author of volumious private diaries describing rural life in the Victorian era. Educated at Wadham College, Oxford University, he became a rural Anglican curate, working primarily in the Welsh Marches. After his death, his frank and open diaries came into the possession of censorious relatives, and only three of the twenty or more volumes are known to have survived deliberate burning. These three volumes have since been used as the source for published collections. His Diaries are considered to be classics, and also of historical importance for the study of remote rural life and Victorian society.

Poet William Plomer published the most widely-known selection of the diaries, as Kilvert's Diary, 1870-1879 (Penguin, 1938—corrected in the 1960s, and with an abridged and illustrated version for children published as Ardizzone 's Kilvert in 1976). A somewhat different selection from that of Plomer was published as Journal of a Country Curate: Selections from the Diary of Francis Kilvert by The Folio Society in 1960. In 1992 a new selection was published under the editorship of David Lockwood, Kilvert, the Victorian: A New Selection from Kilvert's Diaries (Seren Books, 1992).

The Cornish Diary: Journal No.4, 1870 - From July 19th to August 6th, Cornwall was published by Alison Hodge in 1989. The National Library of Wales, which holds one of the three surviving volumes, published The diary of Francis Kilvert: April-June 1870 in 1982.

Kilvert's Diary was dramatised (270 minutes or 390 minutes—sources differ) on British television between 1977 and 1978. The programmes are no longer available, and may have been lost.

Kilvert's life was also the loose basis for Mary Webb's novel Gone to Earth; a curate in the Welsh Marches falls in love at first sight with a fey half-gypsy girl. The novel was filmed by Powell & Pressburger on location in the Welsh Marches as Gone to Earth (1950 in re-cut form, fully restored by the National Film Archive in 1985).

Further reading

• David Lockwood. Francis Kilvert. (Seren Books, 1992)
• John Toman. Kilvert: The Homeless Heart. (Logaston Press, 1992).
• Frederick Grice. Francis Kilvert and His World. (Caliban Books, 1980).