Ill Fares the Land: The Literary Influences and Agricultural Poetics of the Organic Husbandry Movement in the 1930s–50s

Abstract

A number of well-known poets and literary writers were drawn towards the ideas of the organic husbandry movement in the 1930s–50s, including T. S. Eliot, John Middleton Murry and H. J. Massingham. This article explores the literary influences in the seminal organic texts of the period and examines the important role which poetry played in the formulation of key organic concepts and the dissemination of the organic cause. It concludes that a consideration of literature and poetry should play a pivotal role in our understanding of the development of the organic movement.