In 1766, Agatha Drummond, the wife of Henry Home, Lord Kames, inherited the family estate at Blair Drummond in Perth and Kames set about a programme of agricultural improvement there. Kames was interested in agricultural improvement in Scotland, viewing it as an important way to make the country wealthy following decades of neglect. At Blair Drummond, he set about a series of reforms, clearing the land of moss and peat so that crops could be grown.

In 1776, he published this book, The Gentleman Farmer. It served as an important treatise on his work and theories and would go on to become an influential text on agricultural improvement for the remainder of the century – copies were owned by George III and George Washington, the first President of the United States of America. The book offered advice, based on Kames’s own experience, on the growing of crops, crop rotations, farm buildings and livestock.