English

History's Apprentice: The Diaries of B. H. Roberts, 1880–1898

On a drab Monday in 1882, B. H. Roberts, then laboring on a mission in Tennessee, confided to his journal: “I am twenty-five years old today: perhaps one-half of my life has passed away—and what have I done? But little of anything, either of good or evil; my misdeeds are like my talents—on the small order. I have made attempts to accomplish something in various directions, but ‘miserable failure’ is written across the face of each of them.” Roberts then detailed the shortcomings in his career, marriage, and church work. The irony for modern readers is what we know of his future accomplishments. In the half century left to him, he would play a preeminent role in the LDS church as a writer, historian, theologian, and politician. These diaries cover a decade, 1880-1898, in which Roberts was active in Utah as a young church leader. They are his apprenticeship years when he developed the skills that would characterize the rest of his career. Besides illuminating the character of the man himself, they also add much to our knowledge of this pivotal time in history.

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