Joanna Crosby’s Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century: Material Innovation and Cultural Tradition is the latest addition to Bloomsbury’s series on Food in Modern History: Traditions and Innovations, and it lives up to its title and the aspirations of the series by providing a wide-ranging account of diverse issues associated with the history of apples and orchards. Crosby touches on the early development of orchards and their evolution alongside wider changes in the landscape, including the progress of enclosure. She draws on economic history and demography to explore the practicalities of the production, distribution, and exchange of apples, covering both the national and international fruit trade, and delves into social history to consider the role of the apple in the diets of both laborers and the landed elites in the nineteenth century. She discusses the development of fruit nurseries, with case studies of various nurserymen, and the account of the science of the apple covers the work of some eminent pomologists such as George Lindley and the prolific Robert Hogg. There is a very useful bibliography of nineteenth-century pomological publications, including both national and local pomonas, and portraits of the lives of some colorful costermongers. Crosby considers the consumption of apples through analysis of the cider industry and the use of apples in the commercial production of preserves, as well as in the domestic kitchen. She brings the study up to the present day with reflections on the impact of Britain’s departure from the European Union, the emergence of community orchards, and the revival of apple-related traditions such as wassailing festivals. Most of the material is from Britain, and more specifically England, but there is some analysis of American orchards, including reflections on the significance of the myth of Johnny Appleseed. Alongside the historical material, Crosby covers cultural traditions in sections on literary representations of apples, with consideration of a range of texts including adaptations of the Genesis story of the fall and the poetry of Christina Rossetti. There are also various analyses of depictions of apples in visual art, with a particular focus on Victorian paintings. Crosby juxtaposes the realities of the economics of apple production with the resonance of the symbol of the orchard within the popular imagination and demonstrates how the mythologizing of orchards has complicated research into their history. While featuring in a series on food history, this is a fundamentally interdisciplinary study, which has something for everyone.

Crosby has adopted an innovative structure for the argument, tracing the journey of the apple from the acquisition and development of different varieties through the requirements for the planting and siting of the orchard, the systems of distribution and sale, and the ultimate destination of the dining table, kitchen, cider bottle, or jam pot. This is a very engaging way of unfolding the story, but there are places where a clearer sense of chronology would be helpful, especially when the historical material is complicated, involving a network of intersecting social and economic factors, as in the account of the expansion and contraction of orchards from the early modern period to the present or the analysis of the development of the international fruit trade.

The impressive breadth of coverage is inevitably achieved to some extent at the expense of depth of analysis. Fascinating issues are raised but not always fully developed, and the book is full of nuggets of information on diverse topics. There are many subjects about which the reader will want to know more, but which cannot be covered in detail within the scope of this volume, and the author acknowledges that one of the functions of the book will be to provide a stimulus to future apple- and orchard-related research. For example, the accounts of the nurserymen and apple vendors introduce some fascinating characters that could be developed at greater length, and the reader’s curiosity is piqued by the tantalizing reference to a case in which one eminent pomologist accused another of plagiarism. The discussions of the representations of fruit in visual art and literature could be usefully expanded, and the sections on nineteenth-century painting in particular would be greatly enhanced by the inclusion of illustrations.

But while there are elements of the argument that could be expanded, it is good to find a book that leaves the reader wanting more. Crosby’s illuminating and entertaining narrative highlights the range of social, economic, and political questions that are opened up by consideration of the story of the apple and fully justifies the book’s claim that it is a worthy object of academic interest.