A History of Private Life, Vol. 4: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War 4

note : file is readable but all illustrations are missingThe 19th century was the golden age of private life, a time when supreme individual and existential values emerged. The fourth book in this popular series, written for the cultivated reader, chronicles this development from the tumult of the French Revolution to the outbreak of World War I.

The 19th century was the golden age of private life, a time when supreme individual and existential values emerged. The fourth book in this popular series, written for the cultivated reader, chronicles this development from the tumult of the French Revolution to the outbreak of World War I.

Publishers Weekly

People of the Middle Ages were suspicious of solitude. Feudal dwellings were promiscuously crowded, monastery layouts reflected a fear of isolation. Yet, the idea of privacy, linked to an inner life, stubbornly took root. Intimacy found expression in peasant hearths, in orchards where lovers embraced, in noble households with their areas for retreat, in towers and fortresses that gave ordinary people a refuge from the havoc of war. The private sphere spilled out into the neighborhood. Moving from the anonymous 11th century to the stirrings of Renaissance individualism, this second volume of essays in a projected five-volume opus is a marvelous re-creation of history as it was actually lived, an archeological excavation of daily life few historians have attempted. Hundreds of apt illustrations complement discussions of bedroom design, table manners, discovery of the body, customs. The growing importance of the individual is traced through fables, romances, poems and a new realism in painting. The contributors are French scholars; Duby is a professor at the College de France. History Book Club alternate. (March)

The nineteenth century was the golden age of private life, a time when the tentative self-consciousness of the Renaissance and earlier eras took recognizable form, and the supreme individual, with a political, scientific, and above all existential value, emerged. Volume IV of this award-winning series chronicles this development from the tumult of the French Revolution to the outbreak of World War I--a century and a quarter of rapid, ungovernable change culminating in a conflict that, at a stroke, altered life in the Western world. v. 1. From pagan Rome to Byzantium / Paul Veyne, editor v. 2. Revelations of the medieval world / Georges Duby, editor ; Arthur Goldhammer, translator v. 3. Passions of the Renaissance / Roger Chartier, editor ; Arthur Goldhammer, translator v. 4. From the fires of revolution to the great war / Michelle Perrot, editor ; Arthur Goldhammer, translator v. 5. Riddles of identity in modern times / Antoine Prost and Gérard Vincent, editors ; Arthur Goldhammer, translator.