Description
Book SynopsisWhy does landscape matter to us? Lifescapes develops a new approach to landscape history based on comparative biography, offering a penetrating and richly empathetic study of the relationship between individual lives and landscapes, through eight compellingly varied modern British examples.
Trade Review'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
Table of ContentsPreface; 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.
