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In: Essays, Letters & Speeches·History - British·Science - Earth/Agricultural/Farming
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #27516.
Richard Jefferies’ The Toilers of the Field is a nonfiction collection that gathers together a series of essays, letters, and a previously unpublished narrative, all centered on the lives of English agricultural workers in the early 1870s. The volume opens with a detailed description of the varied types of farmhouses that dot the countryside, from grand Elizabethan homesteads to modest thatched cottages, and proceeds to outline the practical arrangements of their interiors, dairies, brewhouses, and gardens, that sustained both the farmer and his labourers. Interspersed among these architectural sketches are pieces originally printed in Fraser’s Magazine and Longman’s Magazine, as well as letters to the Times and a “True Tale of the Wiltshire Labourer” that had never before seen print. Together they form a vivid tableau of rural England, portraying the everyday routines, economic constraints, and social hierarchies that defined the field’s toilers.
The work bears Jefferies’ characteristic lyrical prose, blending meticulous observation with a gentle, sometimes wry, commentary on the changing agricultural landscape. Written in the late Victorian period, the language is formal yet accessible, offering both historical detail and a palpable sense of place. Readers who enjoy richly descriptive social history, especially those interested in 19th‑century English countryside life, will find this collection rewarding. It also appeals to admirers of Jefferies’ nature writing who wish to explore his lesser‑known essays on labour and rural architecture.
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PREFACE.
The first and larger part of this volume, from which it takes its name, consists of papers which will be new to the large majority of readers of Richard Jefferies' works. The five entitled, "The Farmer at Home," "The Labourer's Daily Life," "Field-faring Women," "An English Homestead," and "John Smith's Shanty," appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1874, long before Jefferies had gained any portion of that fame which was so long in coming, and came in full measure too late. Of the three letters to the Times, written in 1872, one was republished, with the permission of Mrs. Jefferies, in an appendix to Mr. Walter Besant's "Eulogy of Richard Jefferies." It finds its natural place in this volume with the other papers, which give so clear a picture of the life of all classes of the cultivators of the soil in the early seventies. The "True Tale of the Wiltshire Labourer" has never previously been published, and is included in this volume by the kind permission of Mr. G. H. Harmer of the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard, for which paper it was written when Jefferies was on its staff, but for some reason was never used.
All the papers in Part II. have appeared in Longman's Magazine, since Jefferies' death, and though they are with one exception very slight, yet they are all characteristic specimens of his work. From internal evidence it appears certain that the longest of them, entitled "The Coming of Summer," was written on June 1, 1881, and the subsequent days. It contains one or two points of resemblance with the famous "Pageant of Summer," which appeared in Longman's Magazine for June 1883. It was perhaps the first study of which that paper is the finished picture.
The frontispiece is reproduced by kind permission of Mr. J. Owen of Salisbury, from a photograph taken by him of Miss Thomas' bust of Jefferies in Salisbury Cathedral.
C. J. LONGMAN.
CONTENTS.
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