The Tyranny of the Countryside

Frederick Ernest Green (1867-1922) was a writer who specialised in recording the daily lives of farmers and agricultural workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This volume, first published in 1913, contains Green's description of the poverty and other problems faced by contemporary agricultural workers. Using his first-hand experiences as a member of a rural Surrey parish council, Green discusses in detail many aspects of the lives of agricultural workers. He explains the power that farmers exerted over their labourers through providing both employment and housing, and explores the nepotism that existed in rural local government. Through his descriptions of rural villages and rural labourers' daily lives, Green demonstrates the depressed conditions and lack of social mobility which existed in rural Britain at the time of publication and examines the causes of this, providing valuable information for the study of changes in rural societies.