English Farming, Past and Present

Rowland Edmund Prothero (1851–1937) was an English author and politician. Published in 1912, his influential survey of English farming since the middle ages is a revised and expanded version of a book originally published in 1888 as The Pioneers and Progress of English Farming. It remains a classic text.

The author and politician Rowland Edmund Prothero (1851–1937), an expert on British agricultural history, held the post of President of the Board of Agriculture in David Lloyd George's cabinet between 1916 and 1919. In 1885 he had written an article for the Quarterly Review in which he traced the progress of English agriculture since the middle ages. This was expanded into a book, published in 1888 as The Pioneers and Progress of English Farming. Then, in 1912, Prothero revised and greatly expanded it under its current title, bringing the story up to date. This classic work charts the development of farming from the medieval manorial system up to the Corn Laws in the nineteenth century and the agricultural crises that confronted administrators at the beginning of the twentieth. The appendices include a chronological list of agricultural writers as well as data on the Corn Laws, tithes, acreage and wages.