ABSTRACT
At the risk of stating the obvious, when approaching texts from an environmental perspective (whether when reading or teaching them), the environment is a great place to start, especially as it has been my experience that many people have a rather muddled picture of what the British Isles were like environmentally in the early modern period. Generally, once we push back in time past the so-called Industrial Revolution, most people imagine England as a rather bucolic place. In part, we have the remarkable success of thousands of years of pastoral art and poetry to thank for this, as a surprising number of individuals seem to imagine preindustrial England as being largely populated by sheep and shepherds. Although some complicate this picture with the inclusion of forests and tilled fields, this impression of England’s early modern environment is nonetheless often wildly inaccurate.
