Henry Stephens (writer on agriculture)

For others of the same name, see Henry Stephens.
Stephens, by John Watson Gordon, about 1860
The grave of Henry Stephens, Rosebank Cemetery, Edinburgh

Henry Stephens (25 July 1795 – 5 July 1874) was a 19th-century farmer in Scotland who wrote on agriculture.

His multi-volume Book of the Farm was a standard text for some seventy years after its first edition of 1844.

Life

Henry Stephens was born in Bengal, the son of Andrew Stephens, a surgeon in the East India Company. Upon the death of his father in 1806, his family returned to Scotland, and Henry was educated at the Dundee Academy. Stephens then attended lectures on farming and agricultural chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. He later became a pupil and farmhand of a Berwickshire farmer named George Brown, in order to obtain some practical experience.[1] He made a tour of continental Europe between 1818 and 1819, focusing on agricultural sites and techniques.[2] Between 1820 and 1837, he farmed his own land in Forfarshire, using progressive and experimental methods. In 1837, he gave up his farm, and spent the rest of his life writing works promoting advanced farming practices, documenting traditional practises, and familiarising the public with the basic principles of agricultural science.[1]

Stephens commercially published his first written works in 1842. His The Book of the Farm, which first appeared in 1844, ran into many editions and became the standard reference work for the agriculture of Victorian era Britain, and remained the standard farming manual into the Edwardian era.[1]

Stephens is buried near the western (sealed) entrance to Rosebank Cemetery in Edinburgh.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Preface to 2010 reprint of the 1844 edition of Stephens's The Book of the Farm: Detailing the Labours of the Farmer, &c. (Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. i
  2. ↑ Frederick Burkhardt, Sydney Smith, Charles Darwin, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1856-1857 (1990), p. 622

External links

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