Information about the author:
Georgy A. Veligorsky
Georgy A. Veligorsky , PhD in Philology, Research Fellow, Scientific Laboratory “Rossica: Russian Literature in the World Cultural Context”, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4316-4630
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This study was carried out at IWL RAS with a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 22-18-00051), https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00051/
Abstract:
The article diachronically traces the history of the English concept “allotment”: from the first use of this word in literature (the end of the 17th century), from the emergence of allotments as such at the beginning of the 19th century (“collective gardens” of the socialist projects of Fergus O’Conner and William Corbet) and their role in the country resurgence after the agrarian crisis and the “hungry forties”; to the formation of the concept of “allotment”, its understanding by British lawyers and philosophers; through the Victorian era (the gardening “boom” of the late 19th century, reflected in the work of many authors: the essays by Richard Jefferies (1870–1880s) and Kenneth Grahame (1890s), in the ballad “Thirty Bob a Week” (1891) by John Davidson, in Thomas Hardy’s novel “Tess of D’ Urbervilles” (1891), in Arthur Macken’s story “A Fragment of Life” (1903), etc.) — and to the “garden revival” of the 1930s, the “victory gardens” of the Second World War (1940s) and the continuing popularity of gardening to this day, which is reflected in thematic radio programs, television series, etc.