England is the southern, the larger, and by far the more populous portion of Great Britain, the largest and most important of European islands. Separated from Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Denmark by the North Sea, from France by another 'streak of silver sea,' the Channel, and from Ireland by St George's Channel and the Irish Sea, the kingdom of England and Wales has only one short land frontier, that towards Scotland. In shape it forms an irregular triangle, of which the eastern side measures in a straight line 350 miles, the southern 325 miles, the western 425; but its shores are so deeply indented by bays and estuaries as to make the coast-line longer in proportion to the size of the land than in any other country but Scotland and Greece. The area of the British Islands (120,832 sq. m.) is less than 1/400th of the land-surface of the world. The colonies and dependencies of the empire of which England is the centre now cover about a fifth of the land-area of the globe. England without Wales (50,823 sq. m.) is about the size of Roumania, less than a fourth of France or of Germany, and but little larger than the single state of New York (49,170 sq. m.); and England with Wales (58,186) is not equal in area to the state of Georgia (59,475), nor a fourth of the size of Texas. Twenty-eight of the states or territories in the Union are each larger than England, several much larger than the whole United Kingdom. Her name England owes to the Engle or Angles, who with the kindred Jutes (Geatas) and Saxons (Seaxe) descended on Albion or Britain, inhabited by Celts and Celticised Iberians, and conquered and occupied the greater part of it In the 5th-8th centuries. These kindred peoples all learned to call themselves Englisc or English, and by Englaland they understood the whole area now occupied by them - an area which in the 7th century extended from the Forth to the English Channel. South-eastern Scotland, as occupied by Angles, and not by Saxons or Jutes, was in the stricter sense English; and the people of the non-Celtic parts of Scotland, though now markedly differing from the southern English, are in blood and in mental and physical type at least as English in the wider sense as the people of Oxford or Kent. Political circumstances led the English and Anglicised Celts of North Britain beyond Solway and Tweed to become the subjects of the alien Scottish king, but their language they still called Inglis, as distinguished from the Gaelic of their Highland fellow-countrymen.

The people of the southern kingdom constitute nearly three-fourths of the inhabitants of the three kingdoms; the English language in some form is that of all but a small minority in any of the three; the English literature is the common inheritance of the whole; the constitution and polity of England, slightly modified, is the British constitution under which the three kingdoms have unitedly become glorious. Hence it is not strange that not merely by Englishmen, but by all foreigners, the name of England is used for what, after the union of the crowns of Scotland and England in 1603, became officially Great Britain, and even for the whole empire, which, since the Irish Union of 1801, is strictly the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. For the physical features, geology, climate, and statistics of England, see Great Britain.

The area of England without Wales is 50,823 sq. m.; that of Wales, 7363; together, 58,186. So that, as the area of the United Kingdom, with Scotland, Ireland, Man and the Channel Islands, is 120,382, England alone covers 42 per cent. of the whole, Wales 6, and England and Wales 48 per cent. The pop. of England and Wales in 1650 is estimated to have been 5,450,000. In 1750 it was probably 6,400,000. From that date the increase was rapid; and the census of 1801 showed a pop. of 8,892,536. In 1841 the pop. of England alone was 15,002,443; in 1851 it was 16,921,888; in 1861,18,954,444; in 1871, 21,495,331; in 1881, 24,613,926. At the census of 1891, England had 27,483,490, and Wales 1,519,035, or together 29,002,525. In 1901 the population of England was 30,807,243, and of Wales 1,720,600; together 32,527,843, making 78.4 per cent. or three-fourths of the total population of the United Kingdom. The density of the pop. in England is greater than in any other European country (disregarding Monaco) save Saxony (725 per sq. in.) and Belgium (589). In 1901 it was for England alone 606 per sq. m.; for England and Wales, 558; for Scotland, only 150. In England and Wales there were, in 1901, 33 towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants, in Scotland only 4, in Ireland 2. In England there were 75 above 50,000, in Scotland 7, in Ireland.3. For the Welsh counties, see Wales; for the area of the English counties in square miles, see the articles on the counties. In 1901 the area (in acres) and the pop. of the historic English counties were as in the following table (meanwhile, under the Local Government Act of 1888, a county of London had been created for administrative purposes out of Middlesex and adjoining counties, with an area of 75,442 acres, and a pop. of 4,536,541, included in the following table in the old counties):

The situation of Britain has been shown to be in the very centre of the land-masses of the globe, a very great advantage for commerce and navigation; England, being nearer the European shores, enjoys the advantage in higher measure than its sister-kingdoms. Its seas are less stormy, and it has a greatly more developed system of navigable rivers. The north-west of England is mountainous and hilly, the east and south mainly a plain crossed by lines of low hills. The fertility of England is much greater than that of Scotland or Ireland, especially that of the wheat-bearing area of eastern England. The agriculturally productive area of England is estimated at 80 per cent. of its total, and of Wales 60 per cent., whereas that of Scotland is only 28.8 per cent., and of Ireland 74. England, whose surface has been said for variety to be an epitome of Europe, is very rich in minerals, of which coal and iron are incomparably the most important, making nine-tenths in value of the whole. The output of coal and iron in England is vastly greater than in Scotland, and Ireland is exceptionally poor in both.