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Conceptualising place in historical fact and creative fiction: rural communities and regional landscapes in Bernard Samuel Gilbert’s ‘Old England’ (c. 1910–1920)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Andrew J. H. Jackson
Andrew J. H. Jackson*
Affiliation:
Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln
*
Email: andrew.jackson@bishopg.ac.uk
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Abstract

The theme of place guides much exploration in rural history and local history. Attempts have been made to create definitions and typologies of place, but these have had to contend with the diverse, complex and dynamic realities of historical pattern and process, local and regional. Nonetheless, historians and those in other disciplines have evolved different approaches to the concept. This study considers how these can inform the investigation of places existing in historical fact in particular periods in the past, and can do similarly for those places located contemporaneously in fictional constructions. Reference is made to various academic writings on place, including by the local historian, David Dymond. The analysis takes the work of the author of fiction, Bernard Samuel Gilbert. Gilbert, although relatively obscure now, incorporated a feature of special note into his later literary output, and one meriting greater attention. This was his personalised, reflective and explicitly articulated approach to forming and expressing place. Moreover, Gilbert’s ‘Old England’, with its imaginary district of 'Bly', can be recognised as corresponding to landscapes and communities existing more broadly in the years up to and through the First World War, and with creations by other authors of regional fiction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , October 2020 , pp. 195 - 209
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Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1. Phythian-Adams, Charles, ed., Societies, Culture and Kinship, 1580–1850: Cultural Provinces and English Local History (Leicester, 1991), pp. xii–23 Google Scholar.

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4. Marshall, J. D., The Tyranny of the Discrete: A Discussion of the Problems of Local History in England (Aldershot, 1997), p. 99 Google Scholar. Marshall draws upon the work of the political and cultural geographer, Jon Agnew, and this particular three-part conceptualisation of place: Agnew, J. A., Place and Politics: The Geographical Mediation of State and Society (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

5. Marshall, Tyranny of the Discrete, p. 98.

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10. See, for example, Beckett, John, Writing Local History (Manchester, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, Andrew J. H., ‘Local history and local history education in the early twenty-first century: organisational and intellectual challenges’, The Local Historian, 38 (2008), 266–73Google Scholar; Tiller, Kate, ‘Local history brought up to date’, The Local Historian, 36 (2006), 150–5Google Scholar.

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13. Phythian-Adams, ed., Societies, Cultures and Kinship, pp. xiii–2.

14. Dymond, Researching and Writing History, pp. 5–11.

15. Ibid., pp. 23–8.

16. Phythian-Adams, ‘Introduction’, pp. 2–19.

17. Hudson, Pat, ‘Regional and local history: globalisation, post-modernism and the future’, Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 20 (1999), 16–18 Google Scholar; Jackson, A. J. H., ‘Problematising and practising “community-focussed” local history: on the Ermine, a council estate in Lincoln in the 1950s and 1960s’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 6 (2010), 48–71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mills, Dennis, ‘Defining community’, Family & Community History, 7:1 (2004), 8–11 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; George, and Sheeran, Yanina, ‘Reconstructing local history: the Sheerans’ reply’, The Local Historian, 31 (2001), 49–50 Google Scholar.

18. Marshall, Tyranny of the Discrete, p. 100.

19. For an overview of Gilbert’s pre-First World War writings, see Jackson, A. J. H., ‘The early twentieth-century countryside of Bernard Samuel Gilbert: Lincolnshire poet, novelist, playwright, pamphleteer and correspondent, 1911–14’, Midland History, 41 (2016), 224–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for an examination of his newspaper correspondence about Lincoln on the eve of the Great War, see Jackson, A. J. H., ‘Civic identity, municipal governance and provincial newspapers: the Lincoln of Bernard Gilbert, poet, critic and “booster”, 1914’, Urban History, 42 (2015), 113–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Snell, K. D. M., ed., The Regional Novel in Britain and Ireland, 1800–1990 (Cambridge, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, K. D. M., The Bibliography of Regional Fiction in Britain and Ireland, 1800–2000 (London, 2002)Google Scholar.

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22. Snell, Bibliography of Regional Fiction, pp. 1–2; Snell, ed., The Regional Novel, pp. 20–1.

23. Jackson, A. J. H., ‘“The serious historian” of the village: rural tradition and change as recorded by Henry Williamson’, The Devon Historian, 53 (1996), 11–15 Google Scholar; Matthews, Hugoe, Henry Williamson: A Bibliography (Tiverton, 2004)Google Scholar; Williamson, Anne, Henry Williamson: Taka and the Last Romantic (Stroud, 1995)Google Scholar.

24. Barrell, John, ‘Geographies of Hardy’s Wessex’, in Snell, , ed., The Regional Novel, pp. 99–118 Google Scholar; Darby, H. C., ‘The regional geography of Hardy’s Wessex’, Geographical Review, 38 (1948), 426–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pite, Ralph, Hardy’s Geography: Wessex and the Regional Novel (Basingstoke, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, Keith, Spirits of Community: English Senses of Belonging and Loss, 1750–2000 (London, 2016), pp. 117–23Google Scholar. Snell in turn refers to the influential work of the sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies, and his notions of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft.

25. Gilbert, Bernard, Letters to America (Oxford, 1926)Google Scholar.

26. Jackson, ‘The early twentieth-century countryside’, 226–8.

27. Gilbert, Bernard, Old England: A God’s-Eye View of a Village (London, 1921)Google Scholar.

28. Ibid., p. v.

29. Ibid., pp. vii–viii.

30. Ibid., pp. ix–xi.

31. Ibid., pp. 257–97.

32. Gilbert, Bernard, King Lear at Hordle and other Rural Plays (London, 1922)Google Scholar.

33. Ibid., p. xviii.

34. Ibid., p. xvii.

35. Ibid., p. xvi.

36. Gilbert, Bernard, Tyler of Barnet (London, 1922), p. xiii Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., pp. 1–2.

38. Ibid., p. xii.

39. Ibid., pp. ix–x.

40. Ibid., p. xiii–xiv.

41. Gilbert, Bernard, The Rural Scene (Collins, 1924), p. 35 Google Scholar.

42. Ibid., pp. 215–36.

43. Ibid., p. 28. Gilbert’s stance on radical extremes and the existing political parties is set out more fully elsewhere, including his championing of a back-to-the-land movement and the establishment of a Rural Party to represent the interests of ‘Old England’: Turnor, Christopher and Gilbert, Bernard, Where Are We Going? A Manifesto for All Who Live on or by the Land (London, 1923)Google Scholar.

44. Gilbert, King Lear, pp. 3–4.

45. Gilbert, The Rural Scene, pp. 32–4.

46. Gilbert, Bernard, Cross Lights: The Tales (London, 1923), pp. 308–20Google Scholar.

47. Gilbert, Bernard, Bly Market: Moving Pictures of a Market Day (London, 1924)Google Scholar.

48. Gilbert, Bernard, Canon Makepeace (London, 1925)Google Scholar.

49. Gilbert, Letters to America.

50. Gilbert, Bernard, Peers Woodman (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar.

51. Gilbert, Cross Lights, p. 220.

52. Gilbert, Letters to America, pp. 2, 31, 35–7.

53. Gilbert, Peers Woodman, pp. 5, 28.

54. Keith, Regions of the Imagination, pp. 129–34; Snell, Spirits of Community, pp. 222–3.

55. Barrell, ‘Geographies of Hardy’s Wessex’, pp. 107–12; James, ‘Landscape in Nineteenth-Century Literature’, pp. 74–5; Keith, Regions of the Imagination, pp. 89–95; Snell, Bibliography of Regional Fiction; Snell, Spirits of Community, pp. 109–27; Williams, Country and the City, pp. 201–14.

56. Lincolnshire dialect and place name dictionaries do not appear to offer much assistance here. The Blythe in the Lincolnshire place name of Bythe Close is described as stemming from the Old English word meaning, among other things, ‘happy, gay and sprightly’, in Gooch, E. H., Place Names of Lincolnshire: Their Historical Meaning and Origin (Spalding, 1947), p. 22 Google Scholar. It was a talk by the current author on Gilbert to the Billinghay History Group on 24th April 2017 that prompted speculation among members that Bly could be Billinghay contracted. Moreover, this might be grounded further upon the observation of the Group that many of the street names for the map of the market town of Bly in Bly Market bear exact or close resemblance to those in Billinghay today.

57. Rodker, John, ‘Bernard Gilbert’, Poetry, 30 (1927), 274–5Google Scholar.

58. Phythian-Adams, ed., Societies, Cultures and Kinship, p. xiii.

59. Gilbert, King Lear, p. xv.