Customer Reviews

The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800s (Writer's Guides to Everyday Life)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are expecting more than a dictionary- Don't buy this book. If you are a reenactor, this book is not for you. The book is filled with names of items and dictionary type descriptions. There is very little written text beyond that. The book seems to be geared more toward the beginning and end of the 1800's with little regarding the 1850's - 1870.

I've been researching the 19th Century (with specific attention to the Old West, but a lot of Eastern culture got transplanted there, so inevitably I've had to learn about that too) for 35 years now, and I still find that a book can occasionally give me some information I didn't have. This is one such volume. Though not by any means an in-depth treatment of the period--no one book could ever cover all the fascinating details of everyday life and society in a hundred crowded years--it did provide me with an assortment of vernacular terms I'd never seen before, a sidebar on stagecoach etiquette, another on the treatment of various common contagions, some information on how safecrackers cracked safes, a good chronology of popular magazines, and various other tidbits to add to my ever-expanding files of information.

Author McCutcheon does occasionally neglect to give facts that would soften some of the gloomy picture he paints. He states that "The nineteenth-century home was a woman's...confines...[and her] work was never done...," but fails to add that household help was cheap and abundant, and even "mechanics" (what we would call skilled workers) earning less than a dollar a day could afford at least a maid-of-all-work; also that the housewife was generally assisted by a resident aunt, mother or mother-in-law, unmarried sister, older daughter, or some combination, as well as neighbors. He doesn't point out that women's rights were a focus of much attention through much of the century and their status did improve, especially after about 1845. Nor does he give any space to the many eccentrics and rebels, from Dr. Mary Walker to Calamity Jane, who defied convention and got away with it. The reader will need to consult other books to obtain a more balanced, to say nothing of a more detailed, picture of the era, and although the many references used in the text are enumerated, there is no bibliography of suggested readings in this volume as there have been in others in the series (I strongly advise looking in the bibliographical essays of assorted American histories to find some titles worth seeking out, as well as checking out the "Recommendations" and "Readers Who Bought This Book..." listings on this page). Still, you will definitely learn things from McCutcheon that you won't readily find elsewhere, and the book is certainly worth your read.

An amazing book! This book offers everything you ever needed or wanted to know about the 19th century. It has everything from slang speech to crime on the streets! Find a comfortable seat, sit back and enjoy your time travel ride back to the 1800's.

As a history buff and aspiring novelist of the California Gold Rush period, I found this volume fascinating. I learned a great deal about slang, clothing, courtship, and how people entertained themselves. Unfortunately, a text-only book is insufficient to properly describe clothing and hairstyles -- or convey exactly what their houses looked like. The book desperately needs drawings or pictures!! The dictionary-style organization is useful, but I would have preferred more narrative text describing each subject before McCutcheon launches into definitions. This volume is definitely worth a spot on my bookshelf, but I'll keep hunting for something that provides the visuals.

I myself write westerns, so I bought this book in the hopes that it would help my writings be more accurate. While the information contained in this book isn't quite as specific as I would have liked, it does have some very interesting and entertaining facts, such as slang terms cowboys used, the terms used for the different hairstyles during the 19th century, and common diseases that plagued the population. It also lists the different types of horses, which is a tremendous help for me. If you write novels or are just an avid history buff (of which I am both), then I think you will find this book interesting.

While this book is more in the form of a dictionary, it also serves as an encyclopedia of quick facts. For historians it is not indepth enough on each topic to suffice but for a writer it is very handy and saves invaluable time by placing at the fingertips facts about minor details that can take up so much time reseaching at the library or on the Net. A book to read it is not but for reference and time-saving fact checking and details it is a must!

The Writer's Guide to the 1800s is a great book. I love how facts are separated into sections like Travel, Going Out, Jobs and such like. Minute details like what furniture rich folks used to decorate their living rooms in 1860, or what fabric womens dresses were made of, or what hairstyle was fashionable in 1834. I enjoyed the entire book, except for the sections on courtship and Marriage-some of it was useful, but some was just too blatant about sex- not needful for my writing style, and not great for any kid to read. Aside from that, I recommend this book highly. It even includes quotes from real letters and newspapers about the times.

This volume is a fantastic idea. Unfortunately it was not executed with the depth or rigor that would have made it a fantastic product. The information and terminology included is of a fairly superficial character, handy for the casual user but not adequate for more "hard-core" needs. I've been using it to write a script. It has come in handy on occasion (and it IS nice to have the information in one volume), but I keep having to seek other sources to round out the picture. In particular, this work would really benefit from some effort to distinguish the radically different worlds and language of the early, middle and late parts of the century. Overall, it's not bad, but it's not likely to be anyone's dog-eared prize reference either.

I am not a writer, I was just interested in the 1800s as a period. I enjoyed this book and read it all the way through. There is so much info here about life in the 1800s. Anyone interested, especially writers who need a feel for the era will find this very handy.

I bought this book with high hopes, but they never seemed to be realized. There's a great deal of information here on the 1800s, but most of it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I often found the information it had was very general, common knowledge, or trivial. Part of my problem may be that I write romance, not western, which is what I think this book is geared towards. Maybe a western romance? Thought it would need to be a rather western romance. This same series, however, has a volume on Recency & Victorian England which I have found to be invaluable. Overall I'm glad to have it on my shelf, but it isn't exactly overused.