A Short History of English Agriculture

Fields, wages and changing methods of cultivation provide the framework for W. H. R. Curtler's account of farming in England. Published in 1909, the book begins with shared village lands and the growth of the manor, then gives particular attention to the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its contents follow enclosure, new crops, livestock breeding, farming equipment and the changing laws governing grain imports.

Farming appears here as both a business and a social arrangement. Curtler explains how households worked scattered strips of land and shared access to meadow and pasture. Later, his discussion of Arthur Young shows agricultural experiments becoming a fashionable interest among landowners and other professions. Crop costs, labourers' wages and diet, periods of prosperity and distress, and tables of prices give readers several ways to trace changes in rural life. The book offers a historical view of the connections between food production, land ownership and economic policy.