Common Ground: Social Equality and the Countryside in the Long Nineteenth Century

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Why do we greet people in the countryside, but not in the city? Does the countryside have a levelling potential to connect people irrespective of class or material distinctions? These questions could be answered through purely scientific or historical research; I address them by examining social commentary of British nineteenth-century (19C) poets and essayists. Their writing provides unique access into subjective, human reactions towards rapidly changing social, human-nature relations with industrialisation, feelings we cannot measure by economic value alone. My interdisciplinary project investigates links between human desire for more equal interpersonal connections and to return to nature in 19C literary prose and verse, revealing powerful common ground between the Industrial Revolution and rapid technological innovation today. The long 19C forged the modern political, economic landscape and the Anthropocene (humanity's impact on nature) open fields were enclosed by hedges, rural labourers migrated to cities, and ideologies of individualism and progress replaced communalrights. I address how connections between social equality and the countryside were culturally constructed between 1750-1900, examining the relevance for understanding social aspects of a return to nature and the countryside's 'levelling' potential today. I look to the past not with nostalgia for a lost age,but critical attention to modern policy contexts of community inequality and climate change, arguing 19C writers speak to today's urgent concern of reconnecting people, communities and environment.