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various papers of which this book is composed were written for different periodicals, at different periods between 1870 and 1884, without thought of their being brought together and forming a whole.

My interest in the subject began with a study of the Reports of the Commission on the Employment of Children, Young Persons, and Women in Agriculture (1867), which I took up in order to gain information for some illustrated articles I was planning on the various types of cottages in the different English counties. These Reports soon convinced me that the subject was too serious to be treated in the pretty fashion I intended, and the result was the paper here reprinted and entitled "The Cottage Homes of England."

The interest thus awakened led me, between 1870 and 1874, to make a number of pedestrian tours in various parts of the country, and to give the information gathered, and the sketches made, in a series of papers. While I was thus going about and talking to various types of English peasants, the Warwickshire strike