The author of numerous popular novels, British author and poet Matilda Betham-Edwards (1836 1919) was also a dedicated Francophile. With books such as France of To-Day (1892), which describes contemporary French life to a British readership, she worked to promote a better understanding between the two nations. In recognition of her efforts, she was made Officier de l'Instruction Publique de France by the French government, and awarded several medals. In this autobiography, first published in 1898, Betham-Edwards recounts significant episodes of her life. She tells of her childhood and education, the publication of her first book in 1857, and her experiences as a female professional author, including meeting George Eliot and John Stuart Mill. Her travel narrative Through Spain to the Sahara (1868), and her editions of the writings of agriculturalist Arthur Young, are also reissued in this series.

Arthur Young (1741-1820) was one of the most important agriculturalists and social commentators of the eighteenth century. The account of his journeys around France (1787-9), also published in this series, remains a vital source for understanding the conditions of rural France on the cusp of revolution. The reports produced on agriculture in the English counties when he was Secretary to the Board of Agriculture from 1793 remain valuable historical sources of farming practices at the end of the eighteenth century. In later life, under the influence of his friend William Wilberforce, he became increasingly concerned at the effects of population growth and rising prices upon the rural poor in Britain. These memoirs, published in 1898, are of 'an untiring experimentalist and dreamer of economic dreams ... a brilliant man of society and the world', and they give detail to 'a life singularly interesting and singularly sad'.

This work was first published in 1793 by the agricultural expert Arthur Young (1741-1820). In addition to farming, he describes the scenery, roads, inns, manners, and - more significantly - examples both of wealth and poverty. Despite describing some servants he encountered in an inn as 'walking dunghills', he was acutely aware of the grinding poverty of the rural poor, noting the excesses of the ruling class, and ascribing to bad government the striking differences he found between the lives of working people in France and England. Hearing of the fall of the Bastille whilst in Strasbourg, he recognised it as presaging either a new constitution or 'inextricable confusions and civil war'. This centennial edition includes an account of recent journeys made by the editor, noting the changes seen since Young's original work. The work remains one of the most fascinating and valuable sources for understanding the conditions of pre-revolutionary rural France.

Journalist, children's author and translator, Matilda Betham-Edwards inspired a generation of writers. A correspondent of Henry James and a friend of George Eliot, she belonged to a literary network that spanned the globe. Published in 1868, her account of her journey to the Sahara received immediate critical acclaim for its graceful prose and intelligent insights. Leading readers through the Dordogne to Madrid and on to the mosques and malaria of North Africa, Edwards introduces her audience to relics, landscapes and ancient edifices that reflect a wide spectrum of religions and societies. A farmer's daughter, she pays special attention to the living and working conditions of agricultural communities and their struggle for survival in nineteenth-century Europe. As one reviewer for the Examiner explained, 'stay at home readers can hardly do their travelling by proxy more easily than by running through her entertaining pages'.