The English Peasant
Studies: Historical, Local, and Biographic

This grim depiction of the realities of life for the rural poor in the nineteenth century was published in 1893.

Richard Heath (Author)

9781108025287, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 January 2011

396 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm, 0.5 kg

Richard Heath, about whom very little is known, travelled around England, and wrote a series of essays on agricultural workers, towards the end of the nineteenth century, when rural life and agriculture were undergoing great changes. The English Peasant was published in book form in 1893. It begins with an outline history of peasant life, which presents a very depressing picture. Agricultural workers' housing may have been picturesque but was primitive in the extreme, and enclosure of common land had worsened their lot, especially in the south and west of England. Heath gives graphic pictures of the conditions in which peasant families lived and worked, dwelling especially on the high figures for infant mortality. He was understandably shocked that a Christian country could let its workers live like this, but hoped that the foundation of the National Agricultural Labourers' Union in 1872 would result in improvements in the workers' condition.

Preface
1. The English via dolorosa, or glimpses of the history of the agricultural labourer
2. The cottage homes of England
3. Walks and talks with English peasants
4. Types of English agricultural life
5. The poor man's gospel.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB]