ABSTRACT
The terms city and country can evoke powerful images and have very different meanings to particular social groups within society. Raymond Williams explains some of the positive interpretations: ‘On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace innocence and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of learning, communication, light’ (Williams, 1985: 1). However, Williams also argues that there are negative associations with the city and the country: ‘On the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance and limitation’ (ibid.: 1). These ideas, though, are much generalised views that have been in existence for a long time; and after industrialisation the differing views became even more distinct because of the rapid growth of towns and cities resulting in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions during the nineteenth century. Anti-urbanism was a popular sentiment in this period, as the poet William Cowper commented: ‘God made the country and man made the town, the former had made a pretty good job of it and the latter a frightful mess’ (Woodell, 1985: 168). So, the relationship between the city and the country has been subject to the changing values and ideals of society from pre-industrial Britain to the twenty-first century and this in turn has impacted upon rural and urban views towards the countryside and British flora and fauna.
