This book brings together leading historians and writers on British and Irish rural history, to consider the role of the land agent, or estate manager, from c. 1700 to 1920. Land agents were an influential and powerful cadre of men, who managed both the day to day running and the overall policy direction of landed estates; as such, they occupy a controversial place in both academic historiography and popular memory in rural Britain and Ireland. But who were these men? It is this question the book seeks to unpack, re-framing the academic field, uncovering a neglected history and making a significant contribution to the historiography of rural Britain and the empire.