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Toggenburg", (Edinburgh University Press, 1970). This being the only source for Bräker's younger life, I have translated almost the whole text up to chapter 67 (1769), but abridgements have been made to later chapters where the autobiography overlaps with his diary.

In 1768 Bräker began to keep a diary which he kept up almost continuously for three decades. It has over 4,000 quarto pages, never published in their entirety, and the years 1775-1778 have been lost. Extracts from it were also published in Bräker's lifetime, and from these it is possible to fill in part of the missing years.The most complete published version is in "Leben und Schriften Ulrich Bräkers" [Life and writings of Ulrich Bräker], edited by Samuel Voellmy and published in three volumes by Verlag Birkhäuser in 1945. I have made my own selection and abridgements from this, omitting or shortening passages of less interest to a modern reader (most of them are reflections on religious or historical subjects and tend to be over-didactic and repetitive). A few quotations have been taken from other editors and critics of Bräker, such as the biography by Holger Böning, 1985. Some use has been made of Bräker's non-autobiographical works as selected by Voellmy, and in a few places I have quoted from contemporaries of Bräker which enhance his account of events. So far as I know there is as yet no substantial English translation of the diary, or any attempt at a biography of Bräker in English.

I have also translated excerpts from the invaluable "Chronik Ulrich Bräker auf der Grundlage der Tagebücher 1770-1798" [Chronicle of Ulrich Bräker based on his diaries 1770-1798] compiled and edited by Christian Holliger and others, published in Bern and Stuttgart by Verlag Paul Haupt, 1985, and hereinafter referred to as "Chronik". This sets out the diary day by day, quoting some paragraphs verbatim and paraphrasing others. I have made my own selection from this, translating some direct quotations and making my own summaries of the rest. In selecting entries I have naturally included those which fill in gaps left by Voellmy and others, and which reflect the main theme of each chapter. I have also chosen some which do not record Bräker's life in particular but throw light on the community in which he lived. I have made a point of including entries referring to the lives of women and girls, since there is little information about this anywhere else. I have drawn attention to passages which the Chronik gives in Bräker's own style and which can be compared with published versions, giving an idea of how editorial work on his text was carried out. The Chronik also includes an earlier autobiography written in 1768 but never published, under the title "Kleine Lebensgeschichte" [Brief autobiography]. I have referred to it occasionally in notes. Information taken from other editors has been indicated by their names, e.g. (Schiel). Notes supplied by myself are set in [ ]. The sources that I used for compiling the introduction and the background notes, are listed at the end of the book. In the text they are acknowledged only when quoted verbatim or on matters of opinion.

All translations from Bräker, from his editors and critics, and from background sources, are my own unless otherwise indicated. I am assuming that readers of this book have no knowledge of German and so have provided translations of, for example, titles of books quoted. Where Bräker quotes from the Bible I have given the equivalent from the Authorised Version, quoting chapter and verse in the notes. For proverbs and idiomatic expressions I have given a near equivalent in English but added a literal translation, for example Bräker writes of the French soldiers as looking "ready to cut each others' throats [lit. break each others' necks]".

It will be seen that my translation of Bräker's autobiography differs considerably from the translation by Bowman. I have tried to retain a flavour of Bräker's period by not using too many expressions dating from later than the 18 th century, and also to retain the sense of his living in a country foreign to English readers. Words denoting weights and coinage have been left untranslated and the names of Swiss places have been left in the German form (e.g. Luzern not Lucerne). For the titles of officials and other administrative terms which have no exact English translation, I have given an approximate English equivalent after the first mention, for example "Landrat [provincial council]". In direct speech I have tried to indicate where dialect has been used by making use of some north-country words such as "lass", "daft", "nowt", etc., but not attempting to make a complete rendering into dialect (which could make it nearly as

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