Lucy Bettesworth

Descriptions of the lives of villagers in a rural Surrey village in the late nineteenth century, first published in 1913.

George Sturt (Author)

9781108025270, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 November 2010

300 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.7 cm, 0.38 kg

George Sturt (1863–1927) was a British wheelwright and writer who usually wrote under the pen-name George Bourne. A native of Surrey, he inherited his father's workshop in the rural village of Bourne, near Farnborough, in 1894 and began to record the daily lives and recollections of his rural family and acquaintances, which he published towards the end of his life. This volume, first published in 1913, contains Sturt's descriptions of characters and traditions of the village in which he lived. Through conversations with his gardener and labourer Fred Bettesworth and his own experiences, Sturt vividly and sensitively describes the community, hardships, daily lives and experiences of a variety of characters from his rural agricultural village, including Fred's wife Lucy Bettesworth. Written with a keen sense of the fragile nature of this community, this volume provides a valuable record of a now-vanished way of life.

1. Lucy Bettesworth
2. Bettesworth odds and ends
3. Some peasant women
4. Dying out
5. At the infirmary
6. Dicky Brown
7. Scythes
8. Down into Sussex
9. Midsummer chatter
10. Pictures in platitude
11. Corn carting
12. Rural techniques
13. Our primitive knowledge
14. Observation lessons
15. A load of wood
16. The country town
17. The antiquarian sentiment.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB]