A Hundred Years Ago

Résumé : This is an unusual book in severaI respects. It is the product of a partnership between two types of specialist: a social historian whose portrait of the 1880s can draw upon the wealth of detailed historical studies published in recent years, and a photographic historian who can make available a type of visual evidence not so far fully exploited by historians. The 1880s is the first decade when there begin to be enough photographs to illuminate a wide range of human experience, and the resulting interaction between prose and photographs, each carefully interwoven with the other, brings home what life was like more vividly than either could achieve on its own. The 230 photographs (many hitherto unpublished) have been selected to bring out the full flavour of daily life, and to clarify the many contrasts between Britain in the 1880s and the way we live now. The result is a rich evocation of a lost society as well as a valuable contribution to the history of photography. This broad-ranging book is also unusual in its structure. After briefly discussing the photograph as a historical source, it embarks on the human life-cycle with chapters on childhood, family life, religion, and the adult worlds of work and recreation. Importance is given to the role of regional diversity, status gradations, public ceremonial and disciplinary institutions in precariously integrating a society that might otherwise have fallen apart. The book concludes with chapters on illness, old age and death. This arrangement, which has not been used in previous portraits of the decade, lends the perspective of human scale to great events. With its ample documentation, its bibliographical essay and its chronological table of events, A Hundred Years Ago offers a unique and exciting blend of analysis and description, of entertainment and instruction, but above all an abundance of visual fascination and sheer delight.