Victorian Country Parsons

London England: Constable & Co. Very Good/Good. 1977. First Edition. Cloth. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall 0094612803 Harback Hardback. Slight crease to D/J. Slightly sunned spine to D/J. Price clipped to D/J. The reign of Queen Victoria witnessed 'the golden summer of the parson's progress'. The author begins her new book with a brief historical outline of the status - social and economic - of the cleric since Chaucer's day, culminating in the high noon of his prosperity in the latter part of the nineteenth century when 'the priest and his patron had in many cases been at the same school and university, and a much larger proportion of the clergy than previously belonged to the higher grades of society'. This more stable period at the parsonage sheltered and encouraged an immense flowering of talent: the budding naturalist, scientist, poet, artist, eccentric - and black sheep - prospered and developed in the atmosphere of ordered calm and comparative leisure. The lives of some of the most vivid of these marvellously individualist characters are the subject of this book. Illustrated. 288 pp. ( We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.) .