Written in the 1790s to give the poor improving reading in place of radical pamphlets, these tales hold up the pious, contented shepherd of Salisbury Plain as a model. Others contrast two shoemakers, the industrious apprentice who becomes a master and idle Jack Brown who ends in prison, and mock the village politicians of the alehouse.
A key document of evangelical and anti-revolutionary Britain; its counsel of contentment to the poor is very much of its era. Download the free EPUB.