author
Gilbert Slater
1864–1938
An English economist and social reformer, he is remembered for linking scholarship with public life and for the rural development work he encouraged in India. His career moved between Oxford and Madras, giving his writing an unusually wide social and cultural reach.
1 Audiobook
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
by Gilbert Slater
About the author
Born in Plymouth in 1864, Gilbert Slater grew up as the son of a schoolmaster and went on to study economics, becoming one of the early doctoral scholars associated with the London School of Economics. He built a career as a teacher and public thinker, with a strong interest in how economic ideas connected to everyday life.
From 1909 to 1915 he served as principal of Ruskin College in Oxford, and from 1915 he became the first professor of economics at the University of Madras. He is especially noted for the rural development work he initiated in India, alongside a broader interest in Indian society and Dravidian culture.
Slater died in Oxford in 1938. Along with his economics and social reform work, he also wrote on literary questions, including an unusual theory that Shakespeare's plays were written by several different hands over time.