The Cottage Paradise

The author, Marcus Huish, explained that the book's title was suggested by Allingham's audience, presumed to be urban workers or emigrants longing for a lost rural England: What does the worker, long in city pent, desire when he cries "Tis very sweet to look into the fair and open fac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Victorian review 2010-04, Vol.36 (1), p.185-202
Main Author: NUNN, PAMELA GERRISH
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Art galleries
Artists
British & Irish literature
Children
Clare, John (1793-1864)
Cottages
Emigration
English literature
Gardens
HAMILTON PRIZE ESSAY
Home gardens
Homeland
Homes
Immigrants
Industrial development
Pre-Raphaelitism
Rural life
Victorian period
Victorians
Writers
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Summary:The author, Marcus Huish, explained that the book's title was suggested by Allingham's audience, presumed to be urban workers or emigrants longing for a lost rural England: What does the worker, long in city pent, desire when he cries "Tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven"? At mid-century, the image of the paradisal cottage was given a distinct application in Punch, where favoured artist John Leech published a number of drawings encouraging the emigration of the urban poor to the colonies (Fig. 4). Nurturing a roseate alternative to the life that was left behind, these drawings suggest that where the British home had sunk to a nadir in the industrial migration to urban centres, the new homeland would host emigrants in a clean and respectable house, in which family life could flourish. Taking to the level and unambitious pathway of life, we greet the peasant smiling at the cottage door, we walk the humble streets of the rural village, enter the parson's parish school, or the labourer's dwelling, talk to the children and the mother neatly clad for church on Sunday morn, or join the circle of the cottar's Saturday night round the brightly-burning fire.
ISSN:0848-1512
1923-3280
1923-3280
DOI:10.1353/vcr.2010.0030