Peculiar Privilege

The best introduction to the social history of fox-hunting as the chief leisure activity of the English aristocracy, and of a central social institution and symbol of traditional pre-industrial society.

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The landmark book provides a clear understanding of the ways in which landed society functioned, and of the assumptions that governed it. The work emphasizes the strength of older pre-industrial assumptions and relationships, as it moves through the railway age, concluding with the Great Depression of Agriculture when hunting changed irrevocably. In the years between the mid-18th century and the British agricultural depression of the 1880s fox-hunting assumed a key cultural role. It was transformed from the private, informal recreation of a few country squires to a highly organised, extremely influential public institution. It never ceased to be viewed as a sport - paradoxically, both of the aristocracy and of the people - and it took on a significance out of all proportion to its role as a mere sport. Hunting and the chase became, in the influential words both of hunting and non-hunting people, a full, legitimate feature of rural society, one which could affect the lives of everyone in the society.