An essay on cottage allotment, or field garden cultivation

Huddersfield: Printed and sold by T. Kemp, 1844. Wrappers. Fine. First Separate Printing (second edition overall) of Nowell's appeal to his fellow mill-owners and manufacturers. With an Appendix, "Example Schedules from the Eastbourne Self-Supporting Schools." Foolscap 8vo (172 x 105mm): 24pp. Handsomely preserved in recent stitched marbled wrappers, printed paper label to upper cover. An excellent example and rare survival with few institutional copies and none in commerce at this writing. Goldsmiths' 33646. Originally published, the same year, as the concluding section of a paper read before the West-Riding Geological and Polytechnic Society, "An essay on farms of industry . . ." From 1750 and over the next 100 years, the majority of common land in Britain was enclosed with hedges planted to divide fields, changing the landscape forever and leaving a whole class of rural poor dispossessed and in peril of starvation for lack of food or the land on which to grow it. The General Enclosure Act of 1845, enacted one year after Nowell's appeal, made provisions for the landless poor in the form of field gardens limited to a quarter of an acre. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable mylar sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).