George Sturt

George Sturt (1863-1927), who also wrote under the pseudonym George Bourne, was an English writer on rural crafts and affairs. He was born and grew up in Farnham, Surrey.[1]

Sturt was a grammar school teacher until 1884 when his father died, after which he took over and ran the family wheelwright shop in Farnham, where he continued to live for the rest of his life.

He wrote numerous books and articles under the name George Bourne, including a novel.

Life

He began work at 15 yrs of age as a school teacher (4). When his father died in 1884 (5) he took over the administration of the family wheelwright business founded in 1706 (6). During this time he also contributed as an assistant to the various craftsman working in the business.

However, the work became either too onerous or he found his preference would be to spend more time writing so he took on a partner (2). Eventually that partner died and his own ill health became a problem, so another partner was found who bought him out in 1920 (7).

Writing

The best-known today of his books is The Wheelwright's Shop (1). It is well-regarded in the Countryside and crafts community. It was, in 1923 and close to the end of his life, he published this his next-to-last book, The Wheelwright's Shop.

Sturt described it as "an autobiography for the years 1884 to 1891" (2) but its continuing interest to its present and recent readership lies in the 170plus pages (3) describing the technology of late-Victorian cart woodwork.

It was after he took over his father's eponymous firm that he learned the technical processes and features of the technology making up the bulk of the book (1).

The text of the book is not that of a barely-lettered villager. Its style is of the presumed weight and sometimes elegance of his studied authors: Ruskin (4), Thoreau, Emerson and Carlyle (8).

Bibliography

  • Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer (1907)
  • William Smith, Farmer and Potter: 1790-1858 (1919)
  • A Year's Exile (1898), his only published novel
  • The Bettesworth book (1901)
  • The Ascending Effort (1910)
  • Change in the Village (1912)
  • Lucy Bettesworth (1913)
  • A Farmer's Life, with a Memoir of the Farmer's Sister (1922)
  • The Wheelwright's Shop (1923)
  • A Small Boy in the Sixties (1927)

References

  1. ↑ Fice, Brigid (2009). Death in Victorian Farnham. Great Britain: Farnham & District Museum Society. p. 64. ISBN 9780901638151.

References 2 [needing source mode]

(2) The Wheelwright's Shop  publisher - Cambridge at the University Press,  1943  [First Edition 1923]

(3) Preface, page v, ibid.

(4) Contents ibid.

(5) Page 12 ibid.

(6) Page 11 ibid.

(7) Page 3 ibid.

(8) Preface, page vi,ibid.

(9) Page 14 ibid.


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