ABSTRACT
I. The immediate causes and the circumstances of the publication.—II. The moral thesis of the work.—III. Rural society in England at the end of the eighteenth century: the aristocracy, the middle class, the clergy.—IV. The agricultural classes: farmers and labourers.—V. The small shopkeepers.—VI. The oddities and failures. Crabbe and the “rustic novel.”—VII. Verdict of contemporaries, and conclusion.
