Industrialisation and Everyday Life

Industrialisation and Everyday Life is widely regarded as a classic of modern social history, inspiring a whole series of profound debates about the transition from preindustrial society to the modern world. Charles Tilly recently wrote of this book that it was "the most important untranslated work of social history to be published in the past generation." With the publication of Sarah Hanbury-Tenison's translation, this gap in the social and cultural historiography of modern Europe is filled at last. Utilizing evidence from an upland Swiss canton, the author provides a comprehensive survey of the impact of the development of widespread cottage industry on popular lifestyles as land hungry laborers added textile manufacture to their existing agricultural concerns. He analyzes the structure of such "proto-industry," looking at the changes wrought upon family life, domestic housing, and popular culture in general. A great variety of literary and artistic sources are drawn together in a vivid portrayal of the ways in which early industrial development and social modernization became fused together.