''The Farm'' is a 1933 novel by Louis Bromfield. Written just before Bromfield's return from decades of living and writing in Europe, the novel reflects the agrarian interests that would dominate the author's thinking during the last two decades of his life. David Anderson describes it as Bromfield's best work but one, like many after the author's early successes, too little appreciated. "The unfair criticisms of the early 1930s have discouraged later critics from looking at his work clearly and coherently," he argues.Anderson, David D. "Louis Bromfield: Overview." Reference Guide to American Literature. Ed. Jim Kamp. 3rd ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Web. 20 July 2011.

Plot summary

''The Farm'' traces several generations of a family’s life on and around a fine piece of land in the

Western Reserve The Connecticut Western Reserve was a portion of land claimed by the Colony of Connecticut and later by the state of Connecticut in what is now mostly the northeastern region of Ohio. The Reserve had been granted to the Colony under the terms o ...

, early nineteenth-century

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. From the time of “The Colonel,” the

patriarch The highest-ranking bishops in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church (above major archbishop and primate), the Hussite Church, Church of the East, and some Independent Catholic Churches are termed patriarchs (and in certai ...

of the MacDougal family, who first claimed the property, to the novel’s present, the 1930s, and the family's last owner of the property, Johnny, the Colonel's great grandson, Bromfield traces the interactions between the MacDougals, their neighbours, the nearby town, and the land itself. Throughout the novel, Bromfield suggests the corrosive effects of a mercantile and industrial economy upon the Jeffersonian ideal of an agrarian society. Although the novel ends in the family selling off the farm to a

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who then leases it to less-than-caring tenants, its concern for the land continued as Bromfield returned to the United States and made Malabar Farm a model of

sustainable agriculture Sustainable agriculture is farming in sustainable ways meeting society's present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs. It can be based on an understanding of ecosystem ser ...

Cultural significance

*In '' 41: A Portrait of My Father'', former United States President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

recounts that his father, former President George H. W. Bush and his mother, former First Lady

Barbara Bush Barbara Pierce Bush (June 8, 1925 – April 17, 2018) was First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993, as the wife of President George H. W. Bush, and the founder of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. She previously w ...

, read ''The Farm'' and considered becoming farmers shortly after they graduated from college.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Farm 1933 American novels Novels by Louis Bromfield Novels set in Ohio