Born in 1787, Mary Russell Mitford was a lifelong friend of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the daughter of a Hampshire doctor who brought his family to the brink of ruin with his gambling debts. In order to support her parents, Mitford composed her stories of rural life from a labourer's cottage at Three Mile Cross, a tiny village between Reading and Basingstoke. These vignettes of country life and people were first published as a series of articles in "The Lady's Magazine" in the 1820s and 1830s. Written with humour, a shrewd understanding of human nature and a genuine love for the countryside, they portray the landscape of the Berkshire downs and the valleys of the Kennet, London and Thames. The author's subjects range from the molecatcher and the gamekeeper to gipsies and gentry, from village gossip and jealousy to a local cricket match and a day at the races.