George Sturt

George Sturt (1863–1927) was a British wheelwright and writer who usually wrote under the pen-name George Bourne. A native of Surrey, he inherited his father's workshop in the rural village of Bourne, near Farnborough, in 1894. He began to record the daily lives and recollections of his rural family and acquaintances, which he published towards the end of his life. First published in 1922, this volume contains Sturt's unique biography of his uncle, farmer John Smith. Sturt bases his account of his uncle's life around Smith's anecdotes and recollections as recounted him during the last years of Smith's life. This unusual structure provides a lively, intimate account of the life of a farmer in rural England during the nineteenth century. Through Smith's recollections and Sturt's own memories, Sturt sensitively describes the domestic life, work and farming methods of a now vanished way of life.

In 1901, George Sturt (using the pen-name George Bourne) published this biography of his gardener, Frederick Bettesworth. This unusual ethnographic account, written in a modified dialect, uniquely captures rural life in late nineteenth-century England. The book bridges the class divide between 'master and man' as Sturt, through many interviews, gets to know his down-to-earth day labourer, and comes to understand peasant life and poverty as seen through the eyes of Bettesworth. In the introduction, Sturt precisely lays out his interviewing methodology, which allows the reader to understand both men as the conversations, and the book, progress. Through 35 chapters, he opens a window on the social relationships between the classes amid descriptions of the work, childhood, education, and family life of the region's agricultural workers. Sturt is humbled and enriched by his friendship with Bettesworth, calling him the 'voice of Britain', a man 'rugged, unresting, irresistible'.