Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside

Edwards, Siân

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-65157-6

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 26 publications

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“…The lives of rural young people, as distinct from children, have received comparatively little attention in the historical literature, with the notable exception of Sian Edwards's work on youth movements and the English countryside from the 1930s. 5 Although there are numerous published and unpublished autobiographies offering rich accounts of individual experience, and a range of both local and national oral history collections that include detailed reflections on growing up in rural areas, these seem to have made a limited impact on histories of youth, leisure, and social histories of rural life in the early twentieth century. This is a rather surprising omission, given that existing histories of youth have demonstrated that the early twentieth century was a pivotal period in the lives, experiences and representations of young people.…”

Section: Rural Youth and The Life Cyclementioning

confidence: 99%

‘There wasn’t all that much to do … at least not here’: memories of growing up in rural south-west England in the early twentieth century

Harrison

2020

Rural History

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Stan was born in 1911 in a small village near the north Somerset coast. When recalling his life in the countryside, he felt that ‘there wasn’t much to do in the evenings … at least not here’. Drawing upon evidence from personal accounts of growing up in the south-west of England in the early twentieth century, this article examines memories of youth in the countryside, with a particular focus on the leisure lives of young people and their experiences of rural space and place. In addition to adding to our knowledge on the lives of rural youth, this study also provides new insights into the complex relationship between people and their environment, and has implications for our understandings of the early formation of a distinct youthful identity in England. The countryside was not simply a backdrop in these recollections; rather, it was formative in how those that grew up in rural communities understood their experience of being young.

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Section: Rural Youth and The Life Cyclementioning

confidence: 99%