Charles Alan Fyffe

Charles Alan Fyffe worked as a British barrister, historian, and contributor to major Victorian reference works. The Land Question grew from a lecture delivered at the Oxford Reform Club on 26 November 1884 and was issued by the National Press Agency in 1885. In this concise work, Fyffe examines British land tenure through such practical matters as primogeniture, settlements, mortgages, building leases, agricultural depression, and relations between landlords and tenants. That subject complements the historical interests behind his better-known History of Modern Europe, but the lecture is an argument about contemporary law and rural society instead of a general narrative history. Library records identify the original publication as a twenty-two-page work, while author records describe Fyffe as both barrister-at-law and historian. The Land Question therefore shows him addressing public reform with the same attention to institutions that shaped his historical writing. Its Oxford lecture setting also places the text within late Victorian debate over ownership, labour, and access to land.