History and the Texture of Modern Life: Selected Essays

by Lucy Maynard Salmon, Bonnie G. Smith (Editor), Nicholas Adams (Editor)

Overview

Almost a century ago Vassar professor Lucy Maynard Salmon (1853-1927) started down an intellectual path that made her one of the most innovative historians of all time. Her historical method relied on extensive use of the documents of everyday life. In class, for example, she surprised her students with laundry lists, grocery receipts, and newspapers, and asked them to interpret these "ephemera" as historical documents. What did the laundry receipts tell about those who used such services? About those who ran such establishments? About systems of domestic service? Business organization? In short, Salmon recentered history from narrative to methodology, from story to apparatus. By examining subjects that we associate with material culture she anticipated current practices by decades. Salmon was modern in her concerns and her methods, and a feminist in both her interests and her approach.

The book contains a cross-section of her essays, including selections from her ground-breaking study "Domestic Service" and her well-known essays "History in a Back Yard" and "Main Street" in which she reads the everyday environment of garden and city in historical terms. Also included are her remarkable essay on the architectural organization of her kitchen and a hitherto unpublished essay on her former professor, Woodrow Wilson, that describes him in vivid terms as an "autophotographer." Salmon's modernism will startle those who have not read her before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812235876
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	02/23/2001
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Adams is Mary Conover Mellon Professor in the History of Architecture at Vassar College. Bonnie G. Smith is Professor of History at Rutgers University.

Editorial Reviews

"This edited collection . . . confirms what her contemporaries understood-that Salmon is an intellectual lion. . . . A scholar whose radical historical vision took in objects, living history, and laundry lists as primary documents, Salmon was model for contemporary material culture specialists concerned with including the experiences of everyday people in the telling of history."

History News

"This edited collection . . . confirms what her contemporaries understood—that Salmon is an intellectual lion. . . . A scholar whose radical historical vision took in objects, living history, and laundry lists as primary documents, Salmon was model for contemporary material culture specialists concerned with including the experiences of everyday people in the telling of history."—History News

From the Publisher

Innovative Vassar historian Salmon (1853-1927) would bring to class documents of everyday life<-->laundry lists, grocery receipts, and newspapers<-->and insist that her students take them seriously as historical documents. Thus she anticipated by some decades the current practice of focusing on methodology rather than narrative, and on apparatus rather than story. Here are 20 essays representing a cross-section of her work from 1897 forward. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews