The Invention of the Countryside: Hunting, Walking, and Ecology in English Literature, 1671-1831

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
List of Color Plates......Page 11
List of Plates......Page 12
List of Figures......Page 13
Preface and Acknowledgements......Page 14
Inventing the Countryside: An Introduction......Page 22
Inventing Modern Fox-Hunting, Inventing the Countryside......Page 33
‘Green Pastoral Landscapes’ and the Picturesque Countryside......Page 36
This Peculiar Pastoral, the ‘Idea of England’......Page 43
PART I: FROM COUNTRY TO COUNTRYSIDE......Page 48
1 The Greenness of Hunting......Page 50
Some Green Paradoxes in Hunting Writing......Page 56
Hunting and Social Ecology......Page 65
A Modern Coda......Page 69
2 Land, and Writing about Land......Page 75
The Poetry of Agrarian Improvement......Page 76
The Science of Agriculture and the Science of Scent......Page 83
The Closed Yet Open Landscape and the Ideology of the Landscaped Park......Page 86
Ecology and the Landlords......Page 89
Game Legislation Described......Page 94
The Politics of Game Legislation......Page 95
Game, Politics and Ecology......Page 96
The Mutual Entanglements of Country and City......Page 97
Rights of Common: A Long History of Struggle......Page 99
The Poacher in Art and Literature......Page 101
John Clare, Robert Bloomfield and the Science of the Greenwood......Page 107
4 The Sporting Life......Page 113
Rural Sports......Page 115
The Language of Sport......Page 116
Changes in Field Sports, 1671–1831: Fishing, Shooting, Coursing......Page 118
Political Governance and the Sporting Ideal......Page 123
Coopers Hill as Touchstone: Hunting......Page 125
Men and Dogs......Page 127
5 The Origins of the Anti-Hunting Campaign......Page 134
The Vegetarian Ideal......Page 136
Metropolitan Intellectuals......Page 138
Poetry, Pets and the Beginnings of Animal Rights......Page 140
Anti-Hunting Sentiments and the Rise of Pedestrianism......Page 146
Coopers Hill as Touchstone: Walking......Page 149
Sporting Culture and the Rise of Pedestrianism......Page 153
Romantic Walking as Anti-Hunting......Page 154
PART II: HUNTING A COUNTRY......Page 164
6 Sportswomen......Page 166
Science and Sporting Culture: Women in the Field......Page 167
Women, Hunting and Poetry in the Seventeenth Century......Page 168
Hunting Women in the Eighteenth Century......Page 174
What the Women Said......Page 178
The Side-Saddle as a Gender Machine......Page 184
7 The Pleasures of the Chase circa 1735 to circa 1831......Page 189
Pleasures of the Grass......Page 193
Equestrian Pleasures......Page 194
Talking of Hounds......Page 196
Sartorial and Linguistic Pleasures......Page 197
The Pleasures of Somervile......Page 200
Our Hunting Fathers......Page 203
The Sadness of the Creatures......Page 205
Somervile via Beckford......Page 210
The Complexity of Somervile’s Achievement......Page 212
8 The Pleasures of Surtees......Page 216
‘Smoke-Dried Cits’......Page 219
Hunting and the Spa Town......Page 220
PART III: WALKING IN THE COUNTRYSIDE......Page 224
Gear......Page 226
Botanizing, etc.......Page 227
‘Hunting the borough’......Page 230
Walkers’ Palimpsests......Page 232
Walking as Trespassing, but also Writing: Wordsworth......Page 234
Walking as Hunting: Clare......Page 237
10 ‘This Lime-Tree Bower’ as Walking Poem......Page 241
Walkers for Pantisocracy......Page 243
11 Dartmoor Visible......Page 251
Notes......Page 266
Index......Page 314