Centre for Rural Policy Research Seminar: Prof. Paul Young - Rider Haggard, Rural England and the Romance of Frozen Meat

In the latter part of the 19th century, as a result of advances in preservation and transportation technologies that operated in tandem with extensive programmes of overseas pastoralization, Britain’s growing body of meat-eaters were increasingly devouring animals reared and slaughtered in the Americas and Australasia. While this meat was relatively cheap it was also controversial. This paper considers the work of the novelist, landowner and agriculturalist H. Rider Haggard in the context of the dynamic but debated rise of imported meat in late 19th century Britain. My paper will turn to three of Haggard’s most popular adventure stories arguing that they worked to stimulate the expansionist carnivorous culture that gripped Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and that became so foundational to the world-ecological development of meat-eating modernity. Paul Young is Associate Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture in the Department of English, University of Exeter.