Much of Blythe's work focuses on the subject of rural England.
Works as an author
- A Treasonable Growth (1960)
- The Age of Illusion (1964)
- Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village (1969)
- A View in Winter: Reflections on Old Age (1979)
- From the Headlands (1982)
- Divine Landscapes (1986)
- Word from Wormingford (1998)
- Talking About John Clare (1999)
- Out of the Valley (2000)
Contributions as an editor
- Writing in a War (1982, originally published as Components of the Scene in 1966)
- The Penguin Book of Diaries (1989. also published as The Pleasures of Diaries and Each Retuning Day)
- Private Words: Letters and Diaries from the Second World War (1991)
- Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd
- Henry James, The Awkward Age
- William Hazlitt, Selected Writings