Book Description

The life of the poor rural worker appears to have been one of unmitigated toil within an unequal society, a reality seldom endorsed in paintings of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The contemporary viewer wished to see visions of the idyllic golden landscapes of Merrie England peopled by happy contented workers. Members of the upper echelons of society, with their families all attired in fine silks and satins, look out at their audience from ornately framed canvases as individuals. Yet the rural poor, the rabble at the gates, the unseen workforce, who toiled at the behest of the Master, are virtually unknown. They have left few records. Enclosure came at a price. The Poorhouse beckoned. And still the agricultural labourer did virtually nothing, for most of the eighteenth century, to protest or rebel against the inequalities of his downtrodden existence.