Alice Morse Earle

Abridged from Alice Morse Earle's "Home life in colonial days" and "Child life in colonial days" first published in 1898/1899. Edited by Shirley Glubok. Special photography by Alfred Tamarin. Here in one volume you will find a wealth of fascinating accounts that provide a genuine and intimate view of how the American colonists spent their days, how they worked and sometimes played and how on the seventh day they "rested." Many of the antiques explained and illustrated here have passed so completely from the American scene that the original names of the articles were determined only after research into diaries, journals and letters from the seventeenth century. One such article that happily has disappeared was called a wooden gag, a cruel device similar to a horse's bit, which teachers used to silence talkative pupils (page 133). Home and Child Life in Colonial Days invites careful study as well as leisurely browsing. in addition to providing authentic reference material, it is one of the most enjoyable books abot our colonial heritage ever published. (dust jacket)

At the end of the 19th century, after Americans had endured thirty years of tremendous change due to rapid industrial growth, social upheavals, and the excesses of the Gilded Age, they began to look back with increasing fondness to their own past. The Colonial Revival in architecture was one fruit of this nostalgia; another was the insightful chronicles of social history in earlier days written by this author. Following the success of her book Home Life in Colonial Days, she wrote a detailed and fascinating account of American children and their lives from the very earliest settlers to the first decades of the new republic. Covering everything from dress to toys, schools to play, discipline and religion, she described in highly readable prose a child's life in the days before the railroad and telegraph.

The author reconstructs for us colonial life by describing in great detail manners, customs, dress, homes, and child life.

xx, 121 p. : 19 cm