English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century

by Francis Michael Longstreth Thompson

First published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Genres: Academic, Victorian, Nonfiction, History

388 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Francis Michael Longstreth (F.M.L.) Thompson is a British historian specializing in 19th and 20th century British social history. He was educated at Bootham School, York and Queens College, Oxford, where he took his Ph.D. in 1956. He was Reader in Economic History at University College London from 1963 until 1968 and was Professor of Modern History at Bedford College from 1968 until 1977. From 1977 until 1990 he was director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and he served as president of the Royal Historical Society from 1989 to 1993.

Reviews

[Jennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written as non-fiction in the 1960s, and it bears a lot of the unfocused and meandering style that is more common for that time. There are no subheadings within chapters, and not much to really navigate the reader through what will be told in that chapter. The titles of chapters are some indication, but leave much to the reader's imagination, and the expectations are not always met.

I didn't find everything that I expected to in this book, but still found it offered some unique insights into the period, and the flow of events. It covers aristocracy and the landed gentry both, and to see how those two classes of society differed and overlapped through the period was quite interesting.

Overall, I found it hit or miss - some very interesting information, and sometimes the detail just seemed very interesting and compelling, and at other times the detail seemed over the top and I found myself glazing over. Overall I'm glad I've read it, but will not likely ever read it again.

[Sophie Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely not a book to pick up unless you have a strong interest in the topic, but if you do it is fantastic. Very clear, non-academic (aka bloated) writing that features lots of well-researched examples as Thompson traces the importance and then eventual decline of the importance of land ownership in the late 18th and 19th centuries.