The Rural Tradition

'There is probably no single quality or characteristic – besides love of the countryside – that must inevitably distinguish a rural writer,' notes W.J. Keith. However, 'what distinguishes rural writing that belongs to literature from that belonging to natural history, agricultural history, etc., is, as Richard E. Haymaker has observed, the writer's "means of revealing Nature as well as describing her"...In the final analysis the rural essayist paints neither landscapes nor self-portraits; instea