Home Life in Colonial Days

Rating:
Summary: A Great Review of Daily Life in Colonial Days
Review: Alice Morse Earle has written several books on life in Colonial America. This is the first one of her books I've read, and I am eager to move on to another volume, perhaps Child Life in Colonial Days. Mrs. Earle's "Home Life" is a fascinating description of everyday life --- the chores, the tools, the dwelling places, the foods, the sights and sounds --- that Colonial Americans knew. Have you ever seen a strange tool or implement in a museum, an antique shop, or hanging on the wall at a country restaurant, and no one seems to know exactly what it is or what it was used for? Read this book: its many illustrations will more than likely include that mysterious object; and Mrs. Earle will describe clearly what it was and how it was used. This book should be in the library of every enthusiast of American antiques. Without a doubt, this book contains information found nowhere else in a book now in print. This is not a history of Colonial America --- although it contains many interesting tidbits about our country's earliest days. It is, however, an excellent description of everyday life in America, 1600 - 1800, with special emphasis on New England and Virginia. As such, this book would be useful not just to historians and antique collectors, but to writers, museum curators, and anyone who wants to understand Colonial America.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but a bit sterile
Review: I frankly had a mixed reaction to Home Life in Colonial Days. Although Alice Morse Earle wrote it over one hundred years ago, there's a freshness and openness to the style that invites the reader along. It is certainly not a work of historical analysis, but nor is it quite a survey. Actually, my biggest issue with it was the lack of people. It might better have been called Home Snapshots of Colonial Houses.

The strengths are that the reader will get a detailed and engaging look at some of the tools and skills required for living in early days. There is considerable discussion on the houses themselves, on food preparation and consumption, on household chores, and other physical aspects of life. Three chapters alone are devoted weaving before we even get to sewing. This last example is, I suspect, one Earle herself had particular interest in. The style does manage to be engaging and detailed at once. The reader really does get a feel for what surrounded the colonists in their daily lives.

But as I mentioned, we get very little about the people. Only one chapter near the end is actually devoted to human customs (the subject is neighborliness). We find out more about the glassware than the people who drank from them. I'm not trying to put down Earle's choice of topics. As the author, she alone decides what to cover. The end effect left me feeling a bit blank, like walking through an old museum after hours with no one around. And I do have to say that for this reason the title is a bit misleading. It wasn't really about Home Life at all. So ultimately I would recommend the book for what it actually is to a reader who know what it is, but not for what it sounds like it will be, because it isn't.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Review of Daily Life in Colonial Days
Review: This hundred-year-old work retains its vitality and usefulness.
In her wonderfully readable narrative, Earle conveys life in the colonies with vividness missing from most conventional texts. Starting with basic shelter, which were sometimes actually caves in the earliest days, she goes on to describe in detail the critical element of food supply, with careful explanations of culinary practices and useful drawings to illustrate the often-obscure utensils. (This latter feature will fascinate antique buffs.) Also covered are the home production of textiles, the dress of the colonists, travel, religious and social practices, flower gardens, and other matters, providing modern readers an insight into everyday colonial life hard to find elsewhere.
Earle's work is a feast of enjoyable information for history readers, collectors, and anyone else who wants to know how the early settlers lived. (The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent early social history.
Review: This hundred-year-old work retains its vitality and usefulness.
In her wonderfully readable narrative, Earle conveys life in the colonies with vividness missing from most conventional texts. Starting with basic shelter, which were sometimes actually caves in the earliest days, she goes on to describe in detail the critical element of food supply, with careful explanations of culinary practices and useful drawings to illustrate the often-obscure utensils. (This latter feature will fascinate antique buffs.) Also covered are the home production of textiles, the dress of the colonists, travel, religious and social practices, flower gardens, and other matters, providing modern readers an insight into everyday colonial life hard to find elsewhere.
Earle's work is a feast of enjoyable information for history readers, collectors, and anyone else who wants to know how the early settlers lived. (The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)