At Day's Close
A History of Nighttime
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- £5.99
Publisher Description
A fascinating and colourful social history of the nighttime.
'A wonderful revelation of a vanished age of darkness' SPECTATOR
'Fascinating' SUNDAY TIMES
'A splendid book ... great entertainment' Sir Patrick Moore
'A triumph of social history. Almost every page contains something to surprise the reader ... one of the most enjoyable literary experiences of the year' MAIL ON SUNDAY
From blanket fairs to night kings, curfews to crime, At Day's Close is an intriguing and captivating investigation into the night. Until now, this rich and complex universe in which we spend nearly half of our lives was a world long-lost to historians.
Here, Ekirch explores how the night was lived in the past, through travel accounts, memoirs, letters, folklore, poems, court records and coroner's reports. More than this, it is a passionate argument in the case for less artificial light in an increasingly bright world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Engrossing, leisurely paced and richly researched, this history finds Ekirch reminding us of how preindustrial Westerners lived during the nocturnal hours, when most were plunged into almost total darkness. By describing how that darkness spelled heightened risk of stumbles, drowning, fires and other dangers Ekirch accounts for the traditional association of nighttime with fear and suspicion, illuminating the foundations of popular beliefs in satanic forces and the occult. He also describes how the night literally provided a cloak of darkness for crimes and insurrections, and how fear of the night sometimes led to racist blame and accusation. A professor of history at Virginia Tech, Ekirch ranges across the archives of Europe and early colonial America to paint a portrait of how the forces of law and order operated at night, and he provides fascinating insight into nocturnal labor of masons, carpenters, bakers, glassmakers and iron smelters, among many others. The hardest nocturnal workers were women, Ekirch writes, doing laundry after a full day's domestic work. Ekirch also evokes benign nighttime activities, such as drinking and alehouse camaraderie; the thrill of aristocratic masquerades; the merrymaking of harvest suppers and dances. A rich weave of citation and archival evidence, Ekirch's narrative is rooted in the material realities of the past, evoking a bygone world of extreme physicality and preindustrial survival stratagems. 8 pages of color and 60 b&w illus.
