Lifescapes: The Experience of Landscape in Britain, 1870-1960

by Jeremy Burchardt

Overview

Why does landscape matter to us? We rarely articulate the often highly individual ways it can do so. Drawing on eight remarkable unpublished diaries, Jeremy Burchardt demonstrates that responses to landscape in modern Britain were powerfully affected by personal circumstances, especially those experienced in childhood and youth. Four major patterns are identified: 'Adherers' valued landscape for its continuity, 'Withdrawers' for the refuge it provides from perceived threats, 'Restorers' for its sustaining of core value systems, and 'Explorers' for its opportunities for self-discovery and development. Lifescapes sets out a new approach to landscape history based on comparative biography and deep contextualization, which has far-reaching implications. It foregrounds family structures and relationships and the psychological dynamics they generate. These, it is argued, were usually a more decisive presence in landscape encounters than wider cultural patterns and forces. Seen in this way, landscape can be understood as a mirror reflecting our innermost selves and the psychosocial influences shaping our development. This is a compelling and original study of the relationship between individual lives and landscapes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009199872
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/11/2023
Series:	Modern British Histories
Pages:	518
Product dimensions:	6.34(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jeremy Burchardt is Associate Professor in Rural History at the University of Reading. He is Principal Investigator of the Arts & Humanities Research Council research network 'Changing Landscapes, Changing Lives' and was P. H. Ditchfield Fellow at the Museum of English Rural Life, 2019–20. His previous publications include The Allotment Movement in England, 1793–1873 (2002) and Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll and Social Change Since 1800 (2002).

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction; 1. Diaries, life writing and popular ruralism; Adherers; 2. Beatrix Cresswell: Exeter antiquarian; 3. William Henry Hallam: Swindon turner; Withdrawers; 4. Katherine Spear Smith: Hampshire artist; 5. Violet Dickinson: itinerant craftswoman; Restorers; 6. Dr John Johnston: Bolton doctor; 7. Bert Bissell: Dudley probation officer; Explorers; 8. Sadie Barmes: London clerk; 9. Fred Catley: Bristol bookseller; Conclusion: towards a deep history of landscape; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

‘This is an important - and genuinely affecting - book. By focusing on how landscape was lived, made sense of, and imagined by eight ‘ordinary’ women and men, Burchardt offers a vital rethinking of what landscape means and does in everyday life. The result is a compelling account that artfully demonstrates how, in a period of rapid urbanisation, the countryside and the natural world remained keystones of identity, wellbeing and hope.’ Carl Griffin, author of The Politics of Hunger: Protest, poverty and policy in England, c. 1750-c. 1840

‘Lifescapes explores the profound role of rural landscape in the lives of ordinary people. It offers a ‘deep history of landscape’ - a history attentive less to abstract cultural discourse than personal, affective, real-life experience. Few books have the potential genuinely to be described as field-defining. This is one of them.’ Paul Readman, author of Storied Ground: Landscape and the Shaping of English National Identity

‘Lifescapes offers a deep history of landscape by revealing how people remembered and traced their lives in relation to the landscapes and places in which they lived. Exploring the life-histories of eight diarists living in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain, Burchardt reveals the value and richness of undertaking a biographical approach to landscape history. His work makes a significant contribution to understanding our emotional attachments to landscapes in the past, while raising important questions on how we dwell and find meaning in landscapes today.’ Nicola Whyte, author of Inhabiting the Landscape: Place, Custom and Memory, 1500–1800

From the Publisher