Books on pre-Victorian rural life

I suggest watching the BBC show Victorian Farm. The hosts involved are Ruth Goodman, Alex Langland, and Peter Ginn. Granted, it is Victorian but it shouldn't be too far off from your time period. That and it's a good way to visualize some of the things you mentioned. Yes, it does cover some of the mechanics of how rural industries worked but it also covered the domestic aspects as well. Ruth Goodman is so fun to watch because she's so enthusiastic about what she's doing. Try looking it up on wikepedia since that might offer some websites/books for more research.

For books, how about 'Lost Country Life' by Dorothy Hartley? It's about medieval rural life, so much earlier than your period, but it goes through the year by the seasons, and I'm betting that many of the routines and regular activities didn't change much until the Industrial Revolution.

Between the late medieval/Tudor period of Lost Country Life and the early Victorian era there were a couple of major changes that created significant disruption in some parts of England, namely the enclosures (which eliminated the old commons and transitioned large parts of England from open field subsistence agriculture to either privatized fields & market farming or wholesale livestock raising, particularly sheep & wool, also with a market focus) and the implementation of large but dispersed rural industries around cloth manufacture & mining that soaked up a lot of the rural labor force displaced from agriculture by the enclosures.

So a lot of the details of daily life in the earlier period may or may not still be applicable to Sapphire at Dawn's setting, depending on exactly where it's set.

Ruth Goodman's book How to be a Victorian may be helpful for day-to-day details. I'm not sure how much it includes of specifically rural life, or the 1830s vs. later decades, but it's a good start & may have useful references.

frimble3 said:

For books, how about 'Lost Country Life' by Dorothy Hartley? It's about medieval rural life, so much earlier than your period, but it goes through the year by the seasons, and I'm betting that many of the routines and regular activities didn't change much until the Industrial Revolution.

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The Industrial Revolution occurred 80 years before the time period in question.

I'd also be cautious about presuming things remained largely unchanged over so many centuries. Earlier scholars made that mistake and came up with some very wierd conclusions.

The Industrial Revoluton had started well before the 1830s. But rural life would still revolve around the seasons and when the crops had to be planted and harvested. Machinery would change and by the 1850s there would be a lot less people on the land. But in 1830 most people would be getting up when sun rose and going to bed pretty much when the sun did. In the winter, they would working by rushlight

Here's some info on the Swing Riots:

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/ruralife/swing.htm

And this is an interesting article on rural housing:

http://richardjohnbr.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/living-in-countryside.html

Mary Webb's novel Precious Bane is a voicy first-person narrative set in 1830s Shropshire. Most certainly worth reading.

Bear in mind that farming varies with part of the country - as in a sheep farm in Cumbria will vary from one in the lowlands.
Crops will vary with soil and altitude.
What fuel is available and how much likewise - coal/peat/wood

Just had a thought - you might also want to look up the late Regency period if you haven't already done so since the 1830's would be a sort of transition period between Queen Victoria and her father's reigns. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that might be useful in blogs/websites devoted to Jane Austin.

I found a blog that looks like it has some really interesting links although they also look like they're all over the place, date-wise. https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/rural-life-in-19th-century-england-appleby/

dirtsider said:

Just had a thought - you might also want to look up the late Regency period if you haven't already done so since the 1830's would be a sort of transition period between Queen Victoria and her father's reigns. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that might be useful in blogs/websites devoted to Jane Austin.

I found a blog that looks like it has some really interesting links although they also look like they're all over the place, date-wise. https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/rural-life-in-19th-century-england-appleby/

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I may have some books at home that would be useful, I'll check tonight and post the titles. The one that comes to mind immediately is What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, by Daniel Pool.

(Looking up the author on Amazon also showed me Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods, by Roy and Lesley Adkins (I don't have this book, but I do have their book on life in ancient Rome...)

edutton said:

I may have some books at home that would be useful, I'll check tonight and post the titles. The one that comes to mind immediately is What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, by Daniel Pool.

(Looking up the author on Amazon also showed me Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods, by Roy and Lesley Adkins (I don't have this book, but I do have their book on life in ancient Rome...)

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I also considered mentioning "What Jane Austin Ate..." as well. lol

OK, so it turns out I may have less to help you than I thought... i have some books on developments after your period, and several on the medieval-to-Elizabethan range.

The books I have that might help:
Rural Life in Victorian England, by G. E. Mingay
Nuts and Bolts of the Past: A History of American Technology, 1776-1860, by David Freeman Hawke
The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840, by Jack Larkin. I can't say enough about this book. It's American, but may well still have information that could be applicable to your needs.
"The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in..." series (series link) has volumes on "The 1800s" and "Regency and Victorian England".

Good luck!

Alessandra Kelley said:

There is a publisher called Shire Books. It specializes in intensely researched small illustrated paperbacks (often more like thick pamphlets or magazines) dealing with all sorts of subjects of interest to the local British historian.

I've found them to be a fabulous resource.

Some subjects: "Fields, Hedges and Ditches" (seriously, that is as country as you can get!), heritage farm animal breeds, ploughs and ploughing, beekeeping through history, country blacksmithing, peat cutting, lime kilns, mills and watermills and windmills, dairies, cidermaking, breweries, canals, gardens, agricultural hand tools, farmer's smocks and work clothing, all sorts of traditional country architecture, rope making, straw crafting and thatching, stagecoaches, wagons, country dialects and customs, hill figures and stone circles, villages and country churches.

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Ooooooohhhhh...
Over here, Colonial Williamsburg produced a small set of pamphlets for traditional crafts (printer, miller, blacksmith, etc), and I have all those. Shire may have to take some of my money as well, now! Pre-electric tech is completely relevant to my interests...