History and the Texture of Modern Life: Selected Essays

by Lucy Maynard Salmon

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her students with laundry lists, grocery receipts, and newspapers, and asked them to interpret these "ephemera" as historical documents.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 Also included are her remarkable essay on the architectural organization of her kitchen and a hitherto unpublished essay on her former professor, Woodrow Wilson, that describes him in vivid terms as an "autophotographer."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.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2001

About the author

American historian

Reviews

[Annika · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read a biography of Salmon and was curious about her writing itself, especially since I've read relatively few early twentieth-century historians. Salmon's writing style is at times oddly stream-of-consciousness, and she sometimes gives overwhelming lists of vivid imagery that feel Whitman-esque (that observation isn't unique to me; the person who wrote the introduction to the book compared her writing style to Whitman as well). Many of the pieces chosen for the book were pamphlets written for her students and the public or pieces for newspapers and magazines. I would be curious to know if her more academic writing was also in the same style! While it can at times be hard to follow the structure of her articles, she is certainly a good writer. There were many brilliant turns of phrase that stopped me in my tracks, especially when she wrote of how history is woven into our everyday lives.

Her interest in public history and in how literally any item can be used as historical evidence felt ahead of its time to me (though, again, I haven't read many historians of this era, so it might have been less cutting edge than I think). She is very up front about her political views and changes that she thinks should be made in society. Perhaps that was common in historical writing at the time, but it certainly read as odd to someone used to present norms in historical writing. The book is dated in other ways too--at one point, she decries "race prejudice" as un-American, but then she makes an incredibly racist comment a few pages later.