ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores that the impact of machine-made goods from outside weakened the position of country-town crafts. The sails of flour mills ceased to turn, malthouses decayed, small local breweries no longer flavoured the atmosphere, and home workers in traditional domestic trades put aside their tools and migrated to local factories or took up other occupations. The book focuses on the nineteenth-century literature that the use of the landscape to reflect moral character goes back to the origins of the novel, and may be found, for instance, in Fielding and Jane Austen. It discusses that th.
