As Various As their Land: The Everyday Lives of Eighteenth-Century Americans - Hardcover

Stephanie Grauman WOLF

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060167998 ISBN 13: 9780060167998

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993

Synopsis

Drawing on journals, letters, and other writings, this vivid historical portrait chronicles the everyday lives, family and social structures, class boundaries, ethnic identities, habits, and lifestyles of American colonists in the eighteenth century.

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Reviews

Less vivid and detailed than the five earlier volumes in the ``Everyday Life in America'' series (Harvey Green's The Uncertainty of Everyday Life 1915-1945, etc.), this last installment emphasizes diversity of American experience during the transitional 18th century. During the 1700's, America grew from ten colonies on the Eastern seaboard, consisting of a quarter-million people preoccupied with survival and their European origins, to 16 states expanding westward, consisting of five million citizens developing a national identity. Here, Wolf (Research Fellow/University of Pennsylvania) is concerned with the commonplace experiences that made up that identity: the organization of daily life and of private time; the habits, attitudes, and occupations of ordinary people--their entertainments and responsibilities, what they ate and wore, and how they furnished their homes. Grouping people by families, occupations, and communities, Wolf also distinguishes them according to class and geography: New England Puritans, Middle Atlantic farmers, Southern plantation owners, Native Americans, African-Americans, pioneers, craftsmen, merchants, and professionals. In a chapter called ``The Invention of Childhood,'' the author's awareness of the diversity of experience is especially revealing, emphasizing the different conceptions of children--from the ``pets'' of the Virginia aristocracy to the laboring children of German immigrants. Wolf concludes by studying community as neighborhood and as network, the development of communications, and the role of the Church in regulating communal life. Using diaries, magazines, and letters, Wolf does some historical housekeeping here, setting things in order, polishing, arranging, and simplifying. A useful resource. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The outstanding characteristic of 18th-century life in America was the diversity of individual experiences, observes Wolf, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Well researched and written like a high school textbook, this study deals with an extraordinary variety of people in equally manifold circumstances: urban and rural dwellers, laborers and land owners, slaves, impoverished immigrants and Amerindians. Their lives were impacted, first by the codification of slavery in the early 1700s and then, after the Revolutionary War, by a drastically altered political structure. Quoting from letters, diaries and other records detailing the daily lives of both men and women, Wolf traces changes in areas of life from child rearing to technology. The beginnings of consumerism and the emergence of new communities are also documented. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Wolf's focus here is as broad as her previous work, Urban Village (1976), a history of the social evolution of Germantown, Pennsylvania, was narrow. However, the concerns are the same as she examines the rich diversity of experience that marked America's people in the 100 or so years preceding nationhood. Wolf's main concern is with immigrant cultures and their transfer to, and transformation of, the soil of New England, the Middle Atlantic region, and the American South. Her thesis, not original but cogently presented, is that the people who evolved distinctively into Americans were largely an invention of necessity. Wolf integrates work from a prior generation of historians with that of younger scholars interested in life once viewed as on the margins. Although the lack of notes will frustrate the expert reader, this work is recommended for academic collections as well as public and high school libraries.
- Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060167998
• ISBN 13: 9780060167998
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352