Abstract
The representation of food in Hardy’s literature responds to the modern advancements in food production, population migration, export and import laws and the advancing culture of dining both in the domestic sphere and the public space. Laws protecting the price of wheat and bread were challenged and the ‘moral economy’ of food in which a fair price was asked for staples such as bread was forgotten in the new market economy of profit and loss. This chapter will provide an historical breakdown of the key factors which influenced food regulation and production from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the fin de siècle.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works cited
A Country Gentleman. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Inclosing Waste Lands and Open Fields [1772]. London: Gale, 2010.
Archer, J. E. ‘The Nineteenth Century Allotment: Half an Acre and a Row’, The Economic History Review. New Series, 50, No. 1. (February, 1997): 21–36.
Ball, M. & Sutherland, D. An Economic History of London 1880–1914. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Bouquet, Mary. ‘Family, Servants and Visitors’, The Farm Household in Nineteenth and Twentienth Century Devon. London: Geo Books, 1985.
Bourke, Joanna. ‘Housewifery in Working Class England, 1860–1914’, Women’s Work: The English Experience, 1650–1914, edited by Pamela Sharpe. USA: Bloomsbury, 1998.
Brown, William. British Sheep Farming. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1870.
Burnett, John. Idle Hands: The Experience of Unemployment, 1790–1990. New York: Routledge, 1994.
———. ‘Trends in Bread Consumption’, Our Changing Fare, edited by T. C. Barker, J. C. McKenzie and John Yudkin. London, Reading & Fakenham: MacGibbon & Kee Ltd., (1966): 61–75.
Caird, Sir James. The Landed Interest and the Supply of Food’ [1897]. Introduction by G. E. Mingay. London: Frank Cass & Co, 1967.
Clapham, J. H. An Economic History of Modern Britain: The Early Railway Age, 1820–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926.
Clark, Alice. Working Life of Women in Seventeenth Century. London: Routledge & Sons, 1919.
Cole, G. D. H. A Short History of the British Working Class Movement, 1789–1925. London: Allen & Unwin, 1927.
Davies, D. The Case of Labourers in Husbandry. University of Michigan: Crultwell, 1795 (digitized 30 October 2009).
Dunbabin, J. P. D. ‘The Revolt of the Field: The Agricultural Labourers’ Movement in the 1870s’, Past and Present, No. 26 (November 1963): 68–97.
Eden, Sir Frederick Morton. The State of the Poor or An History of the Labouring Classes in England, from the Conquest to the Present Period Vol 1. [1797]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Emsley, Clive. Crime and Society in England 1750–1900. 2nd Edition. London: Longman, 1996.
Ensor, Sir Robert. The Oxford History of England 1870–1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.
Evershed, Henry. Practical Sheep Farming. London: Jarrold & Sons, 1898.
Fay, C. R. The Corn Laws and Social England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932.
Hammond, J. L. & Hammond, B. The Village Labourer Vols I & II. London: Guild Books, 1948.
Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd [1874]. London: Penguin, 2003.
Hardy, Thomas. ‘The Dorsetshire Labourer’. Longman’s Magazine, 1883.
______. The Mayor of Casterbridge [1886]. Oxford: OUP, 2008.
______. ‘The Withered Arm’, The Distracted Preacher & Other Tales [1888], edited by Susan Hill. London: Penguin, 1979.
Hartwell, R. M. The Industrial Revolution and Economic Growth. London: Methuen, 1971.
Hobsbawm, Eric & Rudé George. Captain Swing. London: Phoenix Press, 2001.
Hopkins, Harry. The Long Affray: The Poaching Wars in Britain. London: Faber and Faber, 2008.
Horn, Pamela. Victorian Country Women. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Howkins, Alun. Reshaping Rural England: A Social History 1850–1925. London: Harper Collins Academic, 1991.
Jones, E. L. Development of English Agriculture 1815–1873. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1968.
Kingsley, Charles. Yeast: A Problem. London: John W. Parker, West Strand, 1851.
Lefevre, Charles Shaw ESQ.’s. ‘Letter to his Constituents, As Chairman of the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into The Present State of Agriculture by William Blacker, ESQ’ R. Groombridge, London, 1837.
Mingay, G. E. The Agrarian History of England & Wales, Volume 6, 1750–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
———. A Social History of the English Countryside. London: Routledge, 1990.
Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Mozelle, B. ‘Allotments, Enclosure, and Proletarianization in Early Nineteenth-Century Southern England’, The Economic History Review, New Series, 48/3 (August 1995): 482–500.
Oddy, Derek, J. From Plain Fare to Fusion Food: British Diet from the 1890s to the 1900s. Rochester, New York: Boydell Press, 2003.
Osborne John W. William Cobbett: His Thought and His Times. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1966.
Pinchbeck, Ivy. Women Workers & The Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850. London: Routledge, 1981.
Richards, Eric. ‘How Did Poor People Emigrate from the British Isles to Australia in the Nineteenth Century?’ The Journal of British Studies, The University of Chicago Press, 32/3 (July 1993): 250–279.
Rosenberg, N. & Birdzell, L. E. How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World, Basic Books: New York, 1986.
Rotberg, I. & Rabb, T. K. Marriage and Fertility: Studies in Interdisciplinary History. Guildford: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Sayer, Karen. ‘Field-Faring Women: The Resistance of Women who Worked in the Fields of Nineteenth Century England’, Women’s History Review, No. 2 (1993): 185–198.
Slater, Gilbert. The English Peasantry & The Enclosure of Common Fields [1907]. London: Elibron Classics, 2005.
Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. London: Methuen, 1973.
Thompson, E. P. ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past & Present. No. 50 (Feb, 1971): 76–136.
Valenze, Deborah. The First Industrial Woman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Verdon, Nicola. Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth Century England: Gender, Work and Wages. Rochester, New York: Boydell Press, 2002.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Salmons, K. (2017). Historical Context. In: Food in the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63471-5_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63471-5_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-63470-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-63471-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)