Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There

by T.S. Arthur

The story of a small-town miller (perhaps based on Arthur's father) who gives up his trade to open a tavern, the novel's narrator is an infrequent visitor who over the course of several years traces the physical and moral decline of the proprietor, his family, and the town's citizenry due to alcohol.

Excerpt from Ten Nights in a Bar-Room: And What I Saw There
Ten years ago, business required me to pass a day in Cedarville. It was late in the afternoon when the stage set me down at the "Sickle and Sheaf," a new tavern, just opened by a new landlord, in a new house, built with the special end of providing "accommodations for man and beast." As I stepped from the dusty old vehicle in which I had been jolted along a rough road for some thirty miles, feeling tired and hungry, the good-natured face of Simon Slade, the landlord, beaming as it did with a hearty welcome, was really a pleasant sight to see, and the grasp of his hand was like that of a true friend.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical

308 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1854

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Timothy Shay Arthur was a popular 19th-century American author. He is famously known for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There, which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public. Founder of the magazines Arthur's Home Gazette, Arthur's Home Magazine, and The Children's Hour, and editor of the Baltimore Athenaeum and Baltimore Saturday Visitor.

Reviews

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading Ten Nights in a Bar-Room months after hearing about it in a 19th century women's rights class without any idea what I was getting into. This is a heavy-handed moral book, preaching against the evils of drink, and the first half of the book does have its fair share of angelic child melodrama. The second half of this book, however, is an insane temperance themed bloodbath. Pro-Maine Law speeches are punctuated by a surprising amount of stabbings, gouged eyes, and trampled faces, all in slightly more gory detail than I'd expected, and I have to admit that, despite the didactic tone present throughout, there's a post-murder angry mob manhunt that's surprisingly suspenseful.

I have to ask why the narrator would ever go back to this tavern once, let alone ten times, and there are some narrative choices in the book's first stretch that take liberties with perspective, to say the least. Still, if you're interested in 19th century politics and want to read a weirdly bloody melodrama, you could do a lot worse than this.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

obnoxious but a bit amusing? especially when things descend into a bloodbath toward the end

[Lorraine Schönrock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this for Uni.
It’s a temperance classic. Of course it’s a work of propaganda advocating for temperance and weaving in why one should vote for the Maine law. It does that by illustrating all the Heinous things that happen to a town that has a bar that is tempting the inhabitants of said town.
It illustrates the downfall as well as the deaths of the people that were tempted while saying that all of that would not happen if you vote for temperance.
It is a work of it’s time and judging it for what it is it’s actually quite good. It is well written and the storyline is gripping. You want to know what happens to the people and you feel sorry for them.

[Kjsbreda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This heavy-handed, morality novel is told from the standpoint of a man who returns to the same bar ten times over a ten year period. The narrator abstains from alcohol and gambling, so it is never very clear why he spends so much time in this bar-room. It has historical significance as 19th century propaganda literature for strict alcohol control laws and anti-gaming laws. From a literary standpoint, it reminds me somewhat of Uncle Tom's Cabin but is stylistically closer to that of a religious or political tract. The author's view of human will power is very low. His premise is that, if alcohol is readily available, the entire community is doomed -- children will die from accidents, hunger and neglect; wives will become catatonically depressed and will wind up in the insane asylum; husbands and sons will become alcoholics and will wind up killing each other. This is not a very inspiring or pleasant novel.

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating window into the 19th century (white) temperance movement. It's not great literature; it doesn't have a great storyline; the purpose of the book is to depict the corrupting influence of liquor and its sale on a community. The "ten nights" are spread out over several years, as the narrator travels through the town staying at the local tavern, which also functioned as an inn. He traces the downfall of a local miller who sells out and buys the tavern, opening up a bar to sell alcohol. The morality of it is pretty in your face, but it gives you a sense of how the temperance activists viewed the liquor-traffic. I say it depicts the *white* temperance movement, because even though there was a vigorous resistance to Big Liquor amongst Native Americans and Black people, not a single person of color appears in the book.

This was one of the best-selling novels of the 1850s -- it was fascinating, and somewhat enjoyable, to read.

[Therese Dotray-Tulloch · Rating 3 out of 5]

After hearing my Dad talk about the film Ten Nights in a Bar Room for years, how it has stayed with him for over 50 years and how much it effected his feelings towards alcohol, I was curious when I learned that the film, as almost all good films, followed a successful novel first. Definitely a product of its time, Ten Nights is a hard-to-put-down novella about the spiraling downfall of the fictional town of Cedarsville due to the presence of the tavern and hard liquor. The once jovial, hard-working, and respected miller who sets up a tavern becomes a miserable drunk and gambler bringing down his family and the entire town with him.

[William Pugsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

A sanctimonious and judgemental friendless loner brings calamity to a late 19th century small American town. He sits in judgement in a bar, without a drink nor purpose, of the patrons and citizens. Throughout a span of 10 years he comes back to see the evil seeds he's sown bloom in tragedy. Sometimes this dark narrator drifts into flights of fancy, describing scenes he could never have observed, unless he has supernatural powers. That is the mystery at the heart. Is he merely a lonesome fellow creating fanciful backstories and imagined drama or a sinister influencer delighting in the pain that wafts off of him?

[Michael Goldsmith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hey uh you shouldn't drink alcohol because what if some guys at a bar got into a fight and one of them threw a glass and hit a kid that was coming to pick up their dad in the head and the cut required stitches and somehow progressed into a fever that killed the kid?

This is a deeply unserious book in which a dad tries to cure his son's alcoholism by having him run a distillery, and in which it's OK to take morphine to cure the DTs because that's not the cause it's railing against.

Of moderate historical interest to the temperance/prohibition movement.

[Christina Gagliano · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one gets a 5 for doing its work of warning 1850s folks away from alcoholic beverages, in the overwrrought, preachy stye of the times, and a 1 for how it reads now, so I give it a 3 as a compromise. The introduction to the John Harvard Library edition (1964) provided an interesting look at T.S. Arthur, who was a wildly popular writer during his lifetime, and at the history of drinking and the temperance movement in the US from Puritan times through 1850.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because of its historical significance in the Temperance Movement, I have this a 5 star rating. It is a quick if dismal read and made an impact as intended by its author in 1854

[Chani · Rating 3 out of 5]

{3.5}

[spoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beginning was slow, but then it got gothic—in there words: good.

[Emerson Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

what was this bogus

[Ursula Stickelmaier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry but like what even was this book? If you're looking for 101 reasons not to drink, look no further. But if you actually want to enjoy reading I suggest you pass this one up.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 2 out of 5]

Our image of the US in the 1850s is of a country starkly divided between free states and slave states, the tensions between which permeated politics and many aspects of daily life. Indeed a novel from the 1830s, Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself, gives a similar impression of the US two decades earlier, and one can only imagine that the tensions expressed there would be even more pronounced in the decade leading to the Civil War. But in Cedarville, the fictional setting of Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There , political choices come down to being pro- or anti-Temperance; indeed, there's no indication at all whether Cedarville is located north or south of the Mason-Dixon line. This single-issue tunnel vision has caused the author to sacrifice most of the novelist's virtues in favor of polemic. Though told in the first person, the novel includes a touching scene of a drunkard's conversion at his daughter's death-bed which the narrator does not witness. The main virtue Arthur displays here is a unapologetic determination to drive scenes of violence to an extreme; in one climactic scene, a murder is followed by the sudden death of the victim's mother, the killing of the murderer, the brutal beating of a Congressman, and a general melee in which the tavern keeper is hideously maimed.

From the title I expected this novel to describe an extended alcoholic debauch, a kind of 19th century The Lost Weekend, but not all 10 nights are consecutive: they are spread across 4 visits to Cedarville the narrator makes over a period of 9 years. This allows the author to present both the short- and long-term effects of alcoholism, as well as the modest but significant change in the fortunes of the reformed drunkard. The time span also allows Arthur to manage a few stage effects in describing the deterioration of the tavern and the house of Cedarville's most prosperous citizen as the scourge of drink works its effects.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was doing some genealogy research on my family. I began searching on newspapers.com and found quite a few articles about my great grandfather and his life in Lindsborg and Pratt, Kansas during the 1800's. He was the principal of a public school and very involved in community/public education. I found his name in an advertisement for a play titled "Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There." My great grandfather was playing the role of the narrator in the play.
Out of curiosity, I started looking for information about the play. The play, written by, William W. Pratt, was an adaptation of the book of the same name written by Timothy Shay Arthur. Wikipedia has a short, but informative article that explains that the play was very popular during the prohibition era because it dramatizes the problems caused by alcohol addition. The book was also very popular and widely read and, according to Wikipedia, became the 2nd most popular book of it's time; Uncle Tom's Cabin was the most popular.
In 1926, an early film adaptation of the play was released. The film kept the play's temperance theme and was portrayed by an all African-American cast and released by the Colored Players Film Corporation. So that is also historical because the film is one of the pioneering films made by African-American film productions. The play was also made into a Broadway production. I was able to find the film online and watch it. The book can be found on Project Gutenberg.

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read for Masters programme to contextualise Uncle Tom's Cabin

Provides biblical arguments to support temperance, despite the obvious flaw in that prohibition goes against God's rationale for giving humans free will. Even the drinkers vote for temperance in this book. In my experience people with a drink problem are very rarely the first to recognise their problem and therefore would not request this drastic salvation. The impression created is that all patrons of the inn are helpless to drink and require salvation.

It stretches the reader to believe that an entire village/town could be ruined by the opening of a tavern, even nondrinkers were ruined. The quiet village is turned into Sodom and Gomorrah in 112 short pages!

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Apparently, this was one of the most important temperance novels of the 19th century, and it reads as such. This novel is essentially an overwrought, worst-possible-case guide to bar-room life that resonates with sensationalism and unintentional hilariousness more often than realism. As the characters descend further and further into total debasement, the narrator peppers the text with "support the Maine Law" messages. Obviously, I'm taking this novel out of its historical context with this review, but I'm curious to read about what kind of an effect it had upon the temperance movement.

[Orion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been raised myself in a bar next door to the author's home town of Fort Montgomery, I am fascinated to read what is called the best Temperance novel of the 19th century. Set in the 1850s, this morality tale portrays the evil of alcohol in the story of a mill owner who sells his mill to build a tavern in town. Told by a visitor to the town who stays at the tavern for ten days over a period of ten years, he shows how customers and owner are all too weak to resist the temptations of demon rum. An interesting look at pro-temperance literature of the 19th century.

[Erica]

Second highest selling book in 19th century America (behind Uncle Tom's cabin)--but of course, that doesn't make it good reading! A lurid prohibitionist screed (I suspect most ppl read it for its luridness than its moral message), including death, insanity, destroyed families, broken & untrusted laws and men of laws, etc.
Some interesting/telling moments around arguments for temperance in the time (1854), property values in relationship to new saloons, etc.

[Tim Kruse · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s your typical late nineteenth century writing, not my favorite, but quite descriptive and to the point. Maybe old school for some, but the transcending truths of the lifestyle surrounding drinking should make people think twice before indulging in a needless practice.

[Tom Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I regularly play in the melodrama, The Drunkard, which is based upon this book, I really enjoyed getting some more background on the characters. Otherwise, I probably would not have rated it so highly.

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

this is one of those classic turn of the century novels about the evils of liquor. I founf it interesting, but I mainly read it because it is a classic leather bound copy in my family.

[K. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh.

[K.A. Masters · Rating 2 out of 5]

T. S. Arthur's "Ten Nights in a Bar Room" is 250 pages of heavy-handed, sanctimonious Temperance propaganda.

[Tom Rowe · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Tony Poerio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Odd book by today's standards.

But strangely entertaining, and insightful from an historical perspective.

Like Reefer Madness, but for alcohol.

[MQR · Rating 5 out of 5]

EXCELLENT STORY-TELLING. Changed my alignment from popular opinion, that I didn't even know I had.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was hilarious. And terrible. I enjoyed it.

[Joseph D · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hilarious time capsule.