Rural Englands: perceptions of country life and work in the Nineteenth Century

What do we imagine rural life and work were like in the nineteenth century? How did they change in the period, and what impact did this have? Where do we get our ideas from? This talk will draw on contemporary literature, journals and social commentary to consider the perceptions and feelings they reflect about country life, and the influences that shaped them. It will also explore the regional differences between country life in the north and the south and the growth of the idea of the ‘south country’ as the embodiment of English rurality. Barry Sloan is Professor of English at the University of Southampton with particular interests in nineteenth-century literature and modern Irish writing. He and Mary Hammond are currently co-editing a volume of essays, Rural-Urban Relationships in the Nineteenth Century: Uneasy Neighbours? He is the author of The Pioneers of Anglo-Irish Fiction 1800-1850 (1986), Writers and Protestantism in the North of Ireland (2000), and his numerous contributions to books and journals include “‘Between Two Civilizations”: George Sturt’s Constructions of Loss and Change in Village Life’ (2014) and ‘Villages and Village Life, Observed, Remembered and Imagined’ (2014)