Henry Stephens (writer on agriculture)

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

As a young man Stephens attended lectures on farming and agricultural chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. He later became a farm pupil of a farmer in Berwickshire called George Brown, in order to get practical experience.[1] He made a tour of the Continent between 1818 and 1819, focussing on agriculture.[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 which promoted advanced farming practices.[1]

Stephens's first publications appeared 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.[1]

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

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 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

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