We rarely hear the past voices of the rural poor - the labourers dependent on casual employment, the workhouse inmates, the dispossessed. This book lets them tell their own story. It is, frequently, a story of bitterness and resentment, and one that bursts occasionally into outright rebellion. To many who occupied the early-Victorian countryside, injustice seemed part of the landscape.
Robert Lee draws on a remarkable set of historical sources from Norfolk which show how the experience of poverty could lead people into social transgression and political resistance. Using dramatisations of contemporary accounts he presents a series of disturbing true stories, and goes on to assess what each one can tell us about the reality of nineteenth-century rural society. Insurrection, riot, execution, witchcraft, seduction - Unquiet Country visits the dark side of the Age of Improvement.
- ISBN10 1905119038
- ISBN13 9781905119035
- Publish Date 1 December 2005
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 12 March 2022
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Windgather Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 162
- Language English