The Deserted Village: Oliver Goldsmith

First published in 1770, this is a critique of rural depopulation and the pursuit of excessive wealth, describing the decline of a village and the emigration of many of its residents to America. Goldsmith covers the moral corruption found in towns, consumerism, enclosure, landscape gardening and the avarice of the wealthy who take the land for their own pleasures and business whilst the poor who worked the land and lived off the land must go to pastures new. Illustrations by W. Lee Hankey.