Agricultural History Review, Volume 52 Part 1 (2004), p. 112

This is an intelligent and ambitious book which, among other things, seeks to unite two different kinds of approach to the study of the landscape: those which explore the physical landscape as a many-layered product of past economic and social activity; and those which emphasize landscape’s ‘symbolic qualities’, and in which landscape is ‘the external world mediated through subjective human experiences ... not merely the world we see [but] a construction of that world’. Whyte thus seeks to bring together the tradition of landscape history/archaeology developed by Hoskins, and elaborated by Taylor, Rackham, and others, and the approaches of cultural geographers such as Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, and art historians and scholars of English literature such as John Barrell andAnn Bermingham. This in itself is a tall order, but the book is in fact more ambitious than this, for it embracesnot only the whole of Britain but also, to varying extents, Europe and America. Successive chapters deal with the emergence and development of these different approaches: the early modern landscape; ‘Enlightenment, picturesque and romantic landscapes’; ‘Industrial and imperial landscapes’; and ‘Modern and post-modern landscapes’.

Whyte writes well and the book contains much that is interesting and informative, especially to those landscape historians (especially at the undergraduate level) who may be unfamiliar with much of the cultural geography/art historical literature. But it is not without its problems. The scope is somewhat uneven in that there is no consistency of geographical coverage: southern Europe appears, for example, in some detail when art-historical matters are discussed but change in its ‘real’ landscape is hardly ever mentioned. At sudden, unpredictable moments the focus suddenly narrows back to Britain or England. This is in part a consequence of the book’s ambitious scope yet relatively limited length, and many arguments are, inevitably, simplified and abbreviated to a considerable extent. Another effect of this is that Whyte often reiterates or reinterprets traditional arguments which he himself clearly feels would merit reinvestigation. Thus the familiar suggestion that people only began to find upland scenery attractive in history review the later eighteenth century as a result of William Gilpin’s writingis developed in interesting ways, but only in passing is qualified with the comment ‘some views and descriptions of English scenery from the 1750s are very much in the picturesque tradition’. A more rigorous investigation of whether the traditional argument is actually correct – before giving it a modish twist – might have been interesting.

There are other minor problems. The reason why particular themes or individuals are emphasized in the narrative are not always evident, and at times the book seems more concerned with people’s general attitudes to the world than with their understanding of or reaction to landscape per se. Thus the intellectual influence of the geologist James Hutton is discussed in some detail but there is no mention of people like William Smith whosework on stratigraphy laid the foundations for the modern understanding of the physical landscape. Occasionally, Whyte makes excellent points but could have chosen his material better. Thus his discussion of how Constable and Gainsborough painted areas of East Anglia ‘that had not been dramatically altered by eighteenth-century enclosure’, part of an idealization of the rural landscape intended to suppress the extent of contemporary social and economic change, ought perhaps have mentioned Constable’s Mill on a common, which shows East Bergholt common being ploughed up,probably for the first time ever, in the immediate aftermath of the enclosure of 1816.

Yet such criticisms are minor, carping and a little unfair. This is a book which covers a great deal of ground, and not surprisingly some is covered unevenly. Whyte displays an enviable knowledge of a vast range ofwriting, from a very diverse range of academic disciplines. The final chapter is a particularly succinct and lively summary of current views from the likes of David Matless and Stephen Daniels. Those whose maininterest is in agricultural history, or in the structuring of the physical landscape, might be advised to look elsewhere: the book’s strength lies in its analysis of the imagined, perceived landscape. But overall, highly recommended.