Contents

pp ix-x

Preface

pp xi-xii

Abbreviations, conventions, textual note

pp xiii-xiv

Introduction

pp 1-8

Part I - ‘Hard labour we most chearfully pursue’: three poets on rural work

pp 9-10

1 - Thomson, Duck, Collier and rural realism

pp 11-22

2 - Initiations and peak times

pp 23-43

3 - Three types of labour

pp 44-57

4 - Compensations

pp 58-70

5 - Homecomings

pp 71-88

Part II - ‘A pastoral convention and a ruminative mind’: agricultural prescription in The Fleece, I

pp 89-90

6 - Sheep and poetry

pp 91-102

7 - ‘Soil and clime’

pp 103-124

8 - Environment and heredity

pp 125-143

9 - The care of sheep

pp 144-166

10 - The shepherd's harvest

pp 167-180

Appendix A - ‘Siluria’

pp 181-182

Appendix B - Eighteenth-century sheep breeds

pp 183-187

Notes

pp 188-209

Select bibliography

pp 210-221

Index

pp 222-227

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLSH LITERATURE AND THOUGHT

pp 228-229