‘Slandering the Poor’: Maud Davies and Life in an English Village

"The title of this article was the headline in the Warminster & Westbury Journal, January 1910, for a report of a recent meeting of Corsley Parish Council. Most places would be delighted if anew book was published about them, but when in 1909 a young scholar produced a study of this parish on the edge of the Longleat estate, between Warminster and Frome, the council tried to suppress it and have it withdrawn". Jane Howells provides an insight into the controversy, and why the council attempted to keep it quiet.