The Rural Idyll

This book, first published in 1989, recounts the changing perceptions of the countryside throughout the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries, helping us to understand more fully the issues that have influenced our view of the ideal countryside, past and present. Some of the chapters are concerned with ways in which Victorian artists, poets, and prose writers portrayed the countryside of their day; others with the landowners' impressive and costly country houses, and their prettification of 'model' villages, reflecting fashionable romantic and Gothic styles. This title will be of interest to students of history.

G. E. Mingay

List of Plates; The Contributors; Editor's Note; Introduction G. E. Mingay; 1. The Victorian Country House Jill Franklin 2. The Model Village Michael Havinden 3. Country Towns C. W. Chalklin 4. The Victorian Picture of the Country Rosemary Treble 5. Landscape in Nineteenth-Century Literature Louis James 6. The Land in Victorian Literature W. J. Keith 7. A Planned Countryside Alan Rogers 8. People in the Countryside Alan Rogers 9. The Rural Idyll Defended: From Preservation to Conservation Philip Lowe; Biblography; Index