| Author | William Cobbett |
|---|---|
| Country | Great Britain |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | The Political Register |
Publication date | 1822 to 1826 |
Published in English | 1830 in 2 volumes. |
Rural Rides is the book for which the English journalist, agriculturist and political reformer William Cobbett is best known.
At the time of writing in the early 1820s, Cobbett was a radical anti-Corn Law campaigner, newly returned to England from a spell of self-imposed political exile in the United States.
Cobbett disapproved of proposals for remedies for agricultural distress suggested in Parliament in 1821. He made up his mind to see rural conditions for himself, and to "enforce by actual observation of rural conditions" the statements he had made in answer to the arguments of the landlords before the Parliamentary Agricultural Committee.
He embarked on a series of journeys by horseback through the countryside of Southeast England and the English Midlands. He wrote down what he saw from the points of view both of a farmer and a social reformer. The result documents the early 19th-century countryside and its people as well as giving free vent to Cobbett's opinions.
He first published his observations in serial form in the Political Register , between 1822 and 1826. Four rides – from 1822, 1823, 1825 and 1826 – were first published in book form in two volumes in 1830. In 1853, his son James published an expanded edition, including rides from 1821, as well as his father's 1830-32 political tours to the Midlands, North and Scotland.
Rural Rides public domain audiobook at LibriVox 
William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey, one of a popular agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restrain foreign activity and raise wages, to bring peace and ease poverty among farm labourers and smallholders. He backed lower taxes, saving, reversing commons enclosures and resisting the 1821 gold standard. He sought an end to borough-mongers, sinecurists and bureaucratic "tax-eaters" and stockbrokers, and to Jews in Britain, whom he typecast in a similar way. Early in life he was a soldier and devotee of king and country, but his later radicalism furthered the Reform Act 1832 and gained him one of two newly-created seats in Parliament for the borough of Oldham. He urged Catholic emancipation. He saw British agriculture and other economic output geographically. His polemics range from political reform to religion. His best known book is Rural Rides. He argued against Malthusianism, saying economic betterment could support global population growth.
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