Rural Rides

Rural Rides is the book for which the English journalist, agriculturist and political reformer William Cobbett is best known.

At the time of writing in the early 1820s, Cobbett was a radical anti-Corn Law campaigner, newly returned to England from a spell of self-imposed political exile in the United States.

He embarked on a series of journeys by horseback through the countryside of Southeast England and the English Midlands.

The result documents the early 19th-century countryside and its people, as well as giving free vent to Cobbett's opinions.

In 1853, his son James published an expanded edition, including rides from 1821, as well as his father's 1830–32 political tours to the Midlands, North and Scotland.