Surtees is the best-known example in English of the sporting novelist. His novels offer a detailed picture of a specialized but vividly presented section of early Victorian society: the world of horsemen and huntsmen, sportsmen and farmers representative of English country life. He also records one of the multifarious aspects of social change in his period: the invasion by city dwellers and shopkeepers of the traditional pastimes and established hierarchy of the countryside.

Robert Smith Surtees was born in Durham of a family of landed gentry and educated at Durham Grammar School. His father was a typical country gentleman of the eighteenth century, and the boy acquired a taste for fox hunting early in life. As the second son, however, he was ineligible to inherit his father's estate; he was therefore obliged to take up a profession and was articled to lawyers, first in Newcastle and then (from...