ABSTRACT
Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population offers the reader a claustrophobic vision of Britain as an island increasingly pressed upon by an ever-expanding population. George Crabbe has yet to be fully contextualized. Gavin Edwards' notable study of the poet fails to suggest the extent of Crabbe's engagement with contemporary issues and debates. That the poet was writing chiefly during a time of war and its immediate aftermath, and through a period of intense economic upheaval, is insufficiently registered. The purpose of the present chapter is to remedy this, and to transform what has until now been treated for both authors as 'background' into a fully animating context integral to our understanding of their work. The chapter also discusses the gratuitous dependency of Mr Woodhouse and Isabella on their apothecaries. Crabbe's poetry shares with economic and agricultural writings of the time a keen interest in 'virtuous restriction'.
