ABSTRACT
J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay, The Agricultural Revolution 1750-1880, covers the early part of the period essentially from an economic history viewpoint. G. E. Mingay, Rural Life in Victorian England, covers a longer period but is uneven in its treatment, although it contains the only easily available material on the rural professional and middle classes. On specific groups within the countryside there are many studies. For the elite I still think F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century, is the place to start although this is now supplemented by J. C. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England 1660-1914. On the physical and spatial nature of rural England, Christopher Taylor, Village and Farmstead a History of Rural Settlement in England, is an excellent and challenging starting point. More accessible are nineteenth and twentieth century autobiographies and diaries, of which there are a huge number.
