Labouring Life in the Victorian Countryside

by Pamela Horn

Book by Horn, Pamela

Genres: History, Nonfiction

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Pamela Horn is an historian specialising in Victorian social history. The author of acclaimed books on rural life, servant lives and childhood, she lectured on economic and social history at Oxford Polytechnic, now Oxford Brookes University, for over twenty years.

Reviews

[Bill38silver]

This is a well researched slice of Victorian social history, well written in a non-academic style. It has chapters on specific topics, for example, home life, school, wages, influence of religion, sickness, and crime. It states facts and draws from both local records and recollections of the impact of the decline in the number of people engaged in agriculture (once the largest single employer of labour).

Life in rural Victorian England was clearly no bed of roses. It was a harsh grind for most people living on and off the produce of the land, poorly paid and poorly housed with few attractions. This is a useful book to read about days, and a way of life, long gone.

[Louise]

A great deal of information new to me. Having lived in rural Oxfordshire this filled huge gaps in my knowledge.