Abstract
The theme of place guides much exploration in rural history and local
history. Attempts have been made to create definitions and typologies of
place, but these have had to contend with the diverse, complex and dynamic
realities of historical pattern and process, local and regional.
Nonetheless, historians and those in other disciplines have evolved
different approaches to the concept. This study considers how these can
inform the investigation of places existing in historical fact in particular
periods in the past, and can do similarly for those places located
contemporaneously in fictional constructions. Reference is made to various
academic writings on place, including by the local historian, David Dymond.
The analysis takes the work of the author of fiction, Bernard Samuel
Gilbert. Gilbert, although relatively obscure now, incorporated a feature of
special note into his later literary output, and one meriting greater
attention. This was his personalised, reflective and explicitly articulated
approach to forming and expressing place. Moreover, Gilbert’s ‘Old England’,
with its imaginary district of 'Bly', can be recognised as corresponding to
landscapes and communities existing more broadly in the years up to and
through the First World War, and with creations by other authors of regional
fiction.
On the Limits of the Ural Megasupertext in Russian Culture. Review of: Sozina, E. K. (Ed.). (2020). Istoriia literatury Urala. XIX vek [The History of Ural Literature. 19th Century]. (Books 1–2). Moscow: Izdatel’skii Dom YaSK. 1439 p.
