The Writing of Rural England, 1500-1800

by Bending, Stephen; McRae, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9781403912763
• ISBN10: 1403912769
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-24
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The Writing of Rural England 1500-1800 documents and contextualizes the conflicting representations of rural life during a crucial period of social, economic and cultural change. It highlights the dialogues and tensions between agriculture and aesthetics, economics and morality, men and women, leisure and labor. By drawing on both canonical and marginal texts, it argues that early-modern writing not only reflected but played a part in constructing the cultural meanings of the English countryside with which we continue to live.

Author Biography

Stephen Bending is in the Department of English, University of Southampton.

Andrew McRae is in the Department of English, Exeter University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	xi
Feudalism and Beyond: the Anxiety of Change	1	(31)
from Utopia (1516)	2	(2)
Thomas More
`Of Rent Raisers' (1550)	4	(1)
Robert Crowley
A Lantern for Landlords (c.1630)	5	(4)
Anon
from A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1633)	9	(3)
Philip Massinger
from The History of Myddle (1700)	12	(1)
Richard Gough
The Deserted Village (1770)	13	(11)
Oliver Goldsmith
The Village, Book I (1783)	24	(8)
George Crabbe
The Discovery of Landscape	32	(31)
from `April' eclogue, The Shepheardes Calender (1579)	34	(4)
Edmund Spenser
from The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The New Arcadia) (1590)	38	(1)
Sir Philip Sidney
from The Survey of Cornwall (1602)	39	(2)
Richard Carew
`A Description of Romney Marsh', from Poly-Olbion (1612)	41	(1)
Michael Drayton
`On Westwell Downs' (1630s?)	42	(1)
William Strode
A Contemplation on Basset's Down Hill (1658?)	43	(1)
Anne Kemp
Cooper's Hill (1668)	44	(9)
Sir John Denham
from The `Great Journey' (1698)	53	(2)
Celia Fiennes
from Letter to William Shenstone (1760; published 1778)	55	(3)
Miss J.M.
from Observations on the River Wye . . . relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty (1782)	58	(5)
William Gilpin
The Country House	63	(31)
`The Description of Cookham' (1611)	64	(6)
Aemilia Lanyer
`To Penshurst' (1616)	70	(3)
Ben Jonson
`To Saxham' (1631--2)	73	(2)
Thomas Carew
from `Of a Country House' (1700)	75	(4)
Timothy Nourse
`To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, Of the Uses of Riches' (1731--44)	79	(5)
Alexander Pope
`Crumble-Hall' (1751)	84	(5)
Mary Leapor
from A Description of Millenium Hall (1762)	89	(5)
Sarah Scott
Merry England: Property, Pastoral and Rural Pleasures	94	(28)
from The Anatomie of Abuses (1583)	95	(2)
Philip Stubbes
from Pastorals (1606)	97	(7)
Michael Drayton
The Kings Majesties Declaration to his Subjects, Concerning lawful Sports to be used (1618)	104	(3)
King James VI
King James I
`L'Allegro' (1645)	107	(4)
John Milton
`Corinna's going a Maying' (1648)	111	(2)
Robert Herrick
`The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home. To the Right Honourable, Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland' (1648)	113	(2)
Robert Herrick
Rural Recreations: or, The Young Men and Maids' Merriment at their Dancing round a Country Maypole (1688--9)	115	(3)
Anon
from The Shepherd's Week (1714)	118	(4)
John Gay
The Georgic Imperative: Labour, Thrift, Improvement	122	(23)
`Love God with all thy Heart' (c.1565)	123	(1)
Thomas Palmer
`September's Husbandry', from Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1580)	124	(1)
Thomas Tusser
John Kay of Woodsome from `A Brief Note or Account of Mine Own Estate 1591'	125	(1)
from Taylor on Thame-Isis (1632)	126	(2)
John Taylor
`The husbandman doth sow the seeds / And, then, on hope, `til harvest feeds' (1635)	128	(1)
George Wither
from `An Essay on Virgil's Georgics' (1697)	129	(4)
Joseph Addison
from The Seasons (1746)	133	(2)
James Thomson
from Agriculture (1754)	135	(1)
Robert Dodsley
from The Fleece, Book 2 (1757)	136	(5)
John Dyer
Journal (5 November 1766)	141	(2)
John Wesley
from A Six Months Tour through the North of England (1770)	143	(2)
Arthur Young
Property and Oppression: Voices from the Margins	145	(34)
`The Diggers of Warwickshire to all other Diggers' (1607)	146	(2)
`Andrew Abington's Commandments' (c.1618)	148	(1)
from The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649)	148	(10)
Gerrard Winstanley
The Thresher's Labour (1730)	158	(7)
Stephen Duck
from The Woman's Labour (1739)	165	(4)
Mary Collier
`Clifton Hill' (1785)	169	(7)
Ann Yearsley
Letter from the Combined of Cheshunt to Oliver Cromwell Esq., of Cheshunt Park	176	(3)
Gardens: Public and Private Pleasures	179	(27)
from `Essay on Modern Gardening' (1780)	180	(5)
Walpole
from Spring (1746)	185	(3)
James Thomson
from `To the Memory of a Lady lately deceased: a monody' (1747)	188	(3)
George Lyttelton
William Shenstone's correspondence	191	(4)
`Plan and description of the estate of William Shenstone, called the Leasowes near Halesowen, Worcestershire'	195	(3)
Joseph Spence
Robert Dodsley
`An Elegy to William Shenstone, Esq; Of the Lessowes' (1764)	198	(4)
James Woodhouse
from The Spiritual Quixote; or, The Summer's Ramble of Mr Geoffry Wildgoose. A Comic Romance (1773)	202	(4)
Richard Graves
Notes	206	(67)
Index to Editorial Matter	273