Green Victorians

From Henry David Thoreau to Bill McKibben, critics and philosophers have long sought to demonstrate how a sufficient life - one without constant, environmentally damaging growth - might still be rich and satisfying. Yet one crucial episode in the history of sufficiency has been largely forgotten. 'Green Victorians' tells the story of a circle of men and women in the English Lake District who attempted to create a new kind of economy, turning their backs on Victorian consumer society in order to live a life dependent not on material abundance and social prestige but on artful simplicity and the bonds of community.