1700: Scenes from London Life by Maureen Waller
334 pages
Published 2000
Read from August 28 to September 1
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Once I had finally resolved to sit down and read some books again, I had assumed it would take weeks or months to scrape the rust off and get my attention span back in working order. Turns out, I just needed a book that could hold my interest. While not a classic of the genre, 1700 is an absorbing example of "street level history," emphasizing quotidian glimpses of lower and middle class life to illustrate larger social trends rather than framing history as a sequence of great men and great events. If I had one quibble with Waller's presentation, it was her habit of printing the observations of moralists and social "superiors" at face value -- relying, perhaps, on the sophistication of her intended readership to place Daniel Dafoe's opprobrium of the lowest classes within socioeconomic context.
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