The Family Library (Harper) - Softcover

Horatio Smith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0461417421 ISBN 13: 9780461417425

Publisher: HardPress, 1846

Synopsis

The Family Library (Harper) by Horatio Smith. FESTIVALS, GAMES, AND AMUSEMENTS, ANCIENT AND MODERN offers a sweeping, illustrated survey of how societies entertain themselves across time. In the long opening chapters, Smith surveys the origins and moral significance of play, contrasting savage and refined amusements, and tracing the evolution from primitive field-sports to the sophisticated theatre of ancient Greece and Rome. The volume then moves through Jewish, Grecian, and Roman festivities, public games, and dramatic entertainments, and finally to modern English and American holiday customs. With lively anecdote and a broad range of examples, the author shows how festivals, sports, dances, and pastimes reveal social structures, climate, and culture, and how religious and moral concerns have shaped leisure. The work is augmented by later additions from Samuel Woodworth, who expands the survey to American festivals and the amusements of the Middle and Southern States. The result is a compact, richly illustrated compendium that treats leisure as a constitutive element of civilization rather than a mere distraction.

Edition details

• Publisher: HardPress
• Publication date: 1846
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0461417421
• ISBN 13: 9780461417425
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 374