Mountain Republic

Great Crosthwaite, an old parish in the English Lake District, traces its origins to the sixth century AD. For centuries its sixty square miles were administered by eighteen customary tenants, chosen anew each year, who handled every civic matter outside the church. That arrangement, rooted in the Middle Ages, was swept away in the nineteenth century when Victorian lawmakers dismantled the old parish system.

By the late eighteenth century, when the region became more accessible, Crosthwaite was already part of the scenery that inspired the Lake Poets. Later, Canon Rawnsley, who became vicar in 1883, campaigned to protect the Lake District and its natural beauty for future generations. His efforts turned the parish into a founding centre of the National Trust and set an example for a wider movement to conserve the English countryside.

Harrison's book works on two levels. It is a carefully constructed study of one parish, and it is also a broader history of a corner of England with a distinctive social, cultural and aesthetic character. Built from many small, closely observed details, it shows how one community and its landscape fed into a national movement.