A Sweet View: The Making of an English Idyll

A Sweet View explores how writers and artists in the nineteenth century imagined the English countryside as an idyll. The book draws on a very wide range of contemporary sources, and takes in the key makers of the rural idyll, Samuel Palmer, Myles Birket Foster and Richard Jefferies. It also explores the distinctive repertoire of idealized country scenery: the village green, the old country churchyard, hedgerows and cottages.The legacy of the idyll still influences popular perceptions of the essential character of ‘South Country’ English landscape: scenic variety concentrated into a small compass, snugness and comfort, cottage scenery and hedgerow-bounded fields. The countryside idyll forged over a century ago is still with us today. Read more