Rural Rides in the Counties of Surrey

First collected in 1830, this is a series of first-person journeys on horseback through southern English counties, Surrey among them, in the 1820s. Cobbett records harvests, wages, tithes, enclosures, and the condition of labourers and small farmers after the Napoleonic wars, arguing as a Radical against paper money, borough-mongers, and the tax-eating classes of London. Inns, fields, and market towns are described in passing, with frequent political asides. The book is agrarian reportage and polemic, not a picturesque tour and not a novel of country life.

Bound in image blocked brown cloth. Pale brown slipcase.