The two previous volumes in Dr. Fussell's study of The Old English Farming Books have become the standard works of reference on the agricultural literature of England from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and their value for the study of the development of farming over this period is well recognized. With the appearance of the present volume, long-awaited by specialists in agricultural history, this study now reaches the nineteenth century. Dr. Fussell examines the books on agriculture published during the Napoleonic wars and the period immediately following. He gives a complete description of all the editions of these works printed during this period which are still to be found. The period saw a major increase in population, with a larger proportion employed in occupations that denied them any part in food production. These novel conditions promoted a greater interest in new methods of farming, since overseas competition was not effective in influencing the food producers, especially the grain producers who were still protected by the Corn Laws. The agricultural literature of the time provided the medium by which these new methods were disseminated. In the Appendices Dr. Fussell examines one of the main sources for the period, the publications of the Board of Agriculture on farming in England, Scotland and Wales (the County Reports') and gives a valuable analysis of the individual contributions. There is a separate study of other works on farming issued by the Board."

This last volume of The Old English Farming Books brings the series up to 1900, and was completed shortly before the author's death this year. It covers the period of intensive farming in the late nineteenth century, and the spread of agricultural education and textbooks. Science and technology are finally beginning to replace the old methods with new practices, and the improving farmers formed a ready market for books offering the new knowledge. The completion of G. E. Fussell's Old English Farming Books in five volumes provides a complete bibliographical guide to the literature on English farming over five centuries, from 1523 to 1900, and is a fitting memorial to the work of the author, one of the great figures in the study of the history of farming.

The rise of agrarian capitalism in Britain is usually told as a story about markets, land, and wages. This study reveals that it was also about books, knowledge and expertise, challenging the dominant narrative of an agricultural 'enlightenment' and showing how farming books appropriated traditional knowledge in pre-industrial Britain.