Rural Life in Victorian England

by G.E. Mingay

The rapid industrialization of Queen Victoria's English urban settlement, imported foodstuffs, and the mass production of fabric and clothing.

Genres: History

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Professor Gordon Edmund Mingay, 1923-2006, was a British agrarian historian and lecturer.

Mingay served to lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy from 1942 to 1947.

Lecturer London School of Economics, 1957-1965.
Reader University Kent, Canterbury, 1965-1968,
Professor agrarian history, 1968-1986,
Emeritus professor agrarian history, from 1987.

He was a member of the British Agricultural History Society (and it's president from 1986).

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well illustrated and readable account of countryside life during the Victorian era. The main weakness is that for a few sections, the author leaned too heavily on too few resources. For example, large chunks of the book seem to rely chiefly on Richard Jeffries' writings, and more worryingly, Mingay appears to treat Flora Thompson's fictionalised biographies as fact. It would have been nice to have seen a wider range of source material for a couple of the chapters instead of sweeping statements based on very little, so for this reason, I'm only giving it 3 stars.

(NB: The long read time does not indicate lack of readability - first of all I forgot to take this with me on holiday, and then I went down with flu and wasn't capable of reading anything!)