At Day's Close: Night in Times Past

by A. Roger Ekirch

"Remarkable.… Ekirch has emptied night's pockets, and laid the contents out before us." ―Arthur Krystal, The New Yorker Bringing light to the shadows of history through a "rich weave of citation and archival evidence" ( Publishers Weekly ), scholar A. Roger Ekirch illuminates the aspects of life most often overlooked by other historians―those that unfold at night. In this "triumph of social history" ( Mail on Sunday ), Ekirch's "enthralling anthropology" ( Harper's ) exposes the nightlife that spawned a distinct culture and a refuge from daily life. Fear of crime, of fire, and of the supernatural; the importance of moonlight; the increased incidence of sickness and death at night; evening gatherings to spin wool and stories; masqued balls; inns, taverns, and brothels; the strategies of thieves, assassins, and conspirators; the protective uses of incantations, meditations, and prayers; the nature of our predecessors' sleep and dreams―Ekirch reveals all these and more in his "monumental study" ( The Nation ) of sociocultural history, "maintaining throughout an infectious sense of wonder" ( Booklist ).

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Anthropology, Sociology, Historical, Health

488 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recall reading somewhere that around half the population of the modern UK have never seen the Milky Way. I don’t know whether that’s true but I find it believable, and a good indicator of how far we have moved from the nighttime world of our ancestors of just a few centuries ago. Many people today will never have experienced the absolute blackness of a moonless night away from artificial lighting. It’s that world that the author tries to recreate in this book. Incidentally the book only considers Europe and North America, and mainly the British Isles.

The author openly admits that he relies heavily on diaries, journals etc from the past. I would say that the book is predominantly made up of quotes from such sources. Whether other readers would enjoy this book will therefore depend on whether they like that sort of format. I have a penchant for social history so didn’t mind it, though there were sections that felt a bit repetitive.

Much of this book won’t be exactly revelatory to people. The first chapter covers beliefs in demons, ghosts, witches etc, the second features criminality. No-one will be surprised that these activities were associated with night-time, though it’s still moderately interesting to read some of the details. I have shared a few of the passages that I highlighted whilst reading.

The sections I enjoyed most were those that related to the particular rituals and customs associated with night-time, that have now vanished. See the highlights for a description of how walled cities were closed off at night. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is quoted, relating an occasion where he failed to make it back to Geneva before the gates came down, leaving him stranded outside the city walls at night. There was also an interesting discussion about the social role of the most popular form of aristocratic entertainment at night, the masked ball. In pre-modern times social relations within the aristocracy were tightly controlled by rules of etiquette, but “By stripping persons of their identity, they [the balls] undermined distinctions between social ranks, with all revelers recreated equal.”

Nighttime was a period when the social order was reversed in another sense, when slaves, servants, vagrants etc took control and often consciously revenged themselves on the upper echelons, through actions such as theft, vandalism, and arson, perpetrated under cover of darkness. Those actions posed a threat to the existing social order, though there was another aspect in which nighttime violence upheld prevailing moral standards. This was in what was known in England as the “Skimmington ride” (or Skimity ride), a form of vigilante activity that involved public humiliation of those adjudged to have breached community morals. This ritual apparently features in Thomas Hardy’s novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, but I haven’t read that. Some might call it community justice, others might call it mob justice – take your pick.

There’s also a discussion about the past practice - a commonplace one – of “the two sleeps” where people would wake in the middle of the night for an hour or two of quiet wakefulness. Writers up to the 19th century refer to this in ways that make it clear the authors saw it as something so normal it did not require explanation, and yet it is almost unknown today.

One feature of the book using lots of quotes is that I kept checking the notes for the source material, and in consequence I’ve probably added about another dozen books to my already bloated TBR list. Oh well!

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my imagination, this book was incisive, poetic, amusing and able to offer a narrative that would make me want to listen to the Clair de Lune and read Seven Gothic Tales. In reality, this book is the reason that academics invented the word "undertheorized." Filled with scintillating revelations like "the devil is associated with nighttime," and piles of research notes organized into themes. There is no excuse for a boring book when your material includes fairy hills and witches' sabbaths. That's just lazy.

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

In these days of electricity, neon and light pollution, it's hard to imagine just how DARK it must have been in times before artificial illumination. At set of sun, darkness descended, and superstition and worry ran rampant. Fearing robbers and murderers, doors were barred, prayers were said, and a fretful sleep was had until dawn lit the skies once again.


Adriaen Brouwer, Dune Landscape by Moonlight

But not everyone stayed indoors. While gathering gloom inspired fear in some, others finally felt free from society's constraints - "...the darkness of night loosened the tethers of the visible world." The onset of night encouraged drinking, card playing and other activities frowned upon by clergy. There were many recorded cases of people stumbling about in the dark, tumbling into ditches, ravines and rivers...though alcohol frequently played as much a part in their missteps as lack of light. For others, nightfall meant an end to the day's labor and "a welcome truce from daily toil."


William Hogarth, Night

Ekirch provides information on just about everything associated with night through history, from bedding to sleep habits to man's earlier efforts to create light. Some chapters dragged and seemed a bit repetitious, but on the whole, this is a fascinating look at all aspects of nocturnal human behavior.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some breathtaking revelations in this book--particularly the news (to me) that preindustrial people enjoyed two sessions of sleep each night, separated by a period of meditative wakefulness.

Unfortunately, I found Ekirch's style a bit tiresome. It felt like he was throwing diced-up primary sources at me. A typical paragraph:

General statement about nighttime that is either a) completely interesting and new, or b) tired and obvious. "Quote A," context for Quote A. Context for Quote B: "Quote B." "Quote C," context for Quote C. "Another quote from Quote C source."

Because of this pacing, it felt a little bit like someone's thesis. Granted, I don't believe anyone's ever done something like this before--examine nighttime in preindustrial Western Europe and North America--so, like I said, some great tidbits.

I was frustrated by the end, but THEN this sentence appeared on page 336, and I felt better about having trudged through all of Ekirch's previous sentences: "Labor discipline in a Lancashire cotton mill during the 1830s entailed parading the effigy of a ghost across the shop floor at night to deter child workers from sleeping." Mind blown.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author had my full attention based only his topic choice: the history of night time. Unfortunately, after choosing the topic, the author did not then go on to write a book. He wrote a very long list of incidents that his research found happened at night. Where he got his information or any context as to why this was important to people at the time isn't worked into the text. I would have loved to hear about why people thought it was important to record how many people fell into holes at night in some small town in Europe in the middle ages, instead of a list of how many people fell and where and when.
Reading this book feels like reading the notes Ekirch took for himself for a book he is going to write. I would still be excited to read about the history of night time if he ever writes an actual book about it.

[GoldGato · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s difficult for any of us living today to imagine what life was like before the advent of electric lighting. One of my neighbours is over the age of 100 and she does remember being a child on a farm without electricity, where the rising and the setting of the sun determined one’s day and one’s activities. But at least she still had precious kerosene lanterns, which she says she considered to be the most current technology they had on her family’s isolated farmstead. Imagine life without anything, at best just a candle, when night arrived each evening! This book provides the history of how mankind endured, and thrived, through the millennia before industrial times changed everything.

The Prince hath no advantage over his subjects, when they are both asleep.

Night was mankind’s first enemy. Unlike other creatures, humans became weaker during the night, lost without a full moon to stay safe from nocturnal predators. That fear evolved into the superstitions which became part of folklore and mythology and religion in every corner of the earth. Villagers believed demons and spirits took over when day left, resulting in the witchhunts and the burnings of innocent people…all because there was a lack of cheap and available lighting. Nighttime was also when criminals excelled, particularly when there was only one or two watchmen on duty. The old Scottish proverb, ”he that does ill hates the light” is still relevant today but was especially significant into the early twentieth century. For the mighty and the rich may have been atop society during the day, but at night, the smallest and the weakest could wreak havoc.

When Ave Maria you hear, see that your house be near.

The word, “curfew”, originated from the French for “cover-fire”. When this fire was “covered”, it meant the gates of walled cities would be closed and anyone caught outside would have to wait until daytime arrived before they could go back home. In some instances, this resulted in stampedes and drownings as panicked residents ran back to get inside, only to be trampled or to fall into moats. How mankind survived it all is amazing, yet few of us think of how easy it is for us now. Of course, we now have light noise, so much so that it becomes more and more difficult to see the night sky, particularly with the advent of LED lighting.

This book is simply packed with facts galore. The author really did his job doing the research, but it reads as though it was written to comply with a college professor’s publication requirement. Every paragraph is crammed with factoids in quotations, which was difficult for me to establish a reading flow. So, four stars for knowledge and two stars for writing equals a solid three-star read.

Book Season = Winter (knitted sleeves of nature)

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history of night-time in the early modern period was both appropriate and frustrating as an insomnia book. I read parts of it after waking up in the middle of the night on several occasions. As well as being thematically appropriate it was also rather stolid, which may have helped me drift back to sleep. Ekirch’s themes are the activities, cultural perceptions, and material details of nighttime in the West before the transformation of electric light. He draws upon sources including diaries, books, plays, poetry, and court records, as well as including a pleasingly large number of illustrations. The most compelling parts for me were accounts of how darkness provided a measure of freedom to the oppressed:

Night, by contrast, was neither a set piece of ritual license nor a temporary escape from reality. Instead, it represented an alternate reality for a substantial set of the preindustrial population, a realm of its own that, at a minimum, implicitly challenged the institutions of the workaday world. As a resident of Maryland said of slaves, “Though you have them slaves all the day, they are not so in the night.”

Less thought-provoking was the material on crimes that took place in the dark, which became rather repetitive. I enjoyed the discussion of sleeping habits and dreams, which managed to avoid romanticising pre-electricity sleeping habits until the very end of the book. As Ekirch points out, just because the pre-industrial population weren’t kept awake by light, it does not follow that they all slept well. Illness, cold, bed sharing, bugs, marauders, fire, and concerns about all of the above prevented sleep very effectively. He is nonetheless rather fascinated by the first and second sleep structure that apparently resulted when people went to bed earlier. Those who habitually stayed up later, which is now all of us, instead tended not to have a two hour gap between blocks of sleep. Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams has further details of the debate on how ‘natural’ this habit of sleep might be.

Although the whole did not make much of an impact on me, parts of ‘At Day’s Close’ were striking and thought-provoking. I think it could perhaps have been edited down to shorter length. Also, Ekirch is American and this is sometimes evident in word choices that grated on me. Specifically, he repeatedly uses ‘besotted’ as a synonym for drunk, whereas I think of it as a synonym for infatuated. The former is not wrong as such, but the latter is much more common.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember the great north eastern blackout of 2003. It was an unsettling night spent in our home...at the time located in a borderline sketchy area...looking out the window into utter blackness...hearing sirens in the distance and the occasional gunshot to the east. How we missed the simple act of flicking a switch to bring light (not to mention air conditioning! It was August.) My husband and I spent a long evening talking and keeping one ear to the door. One of the most fascinating relics of this experience was the aerial view of Earth taken from the Space Station on that night. The entire north east quadrant of the United States was bathed in darkness. It was an eerie image for most of us who have lived our entire lives under the constant glow of artificial illumination.

At Day's Close: Night in Times Past is a truly fascinating exploration of night time in pre-industrial society. What was the populations relationship to darkness? How did they sleep? How different was their society from our 24-hour lifestyle? Was it dangerous? Was it more peaceful? These are not questions I had ever contemplated before reading a review of this book about a year ago. However, I found the topic to be most intriguing once I began reading.

Imagine how the earth, as viewed from the sky, appeared in the 16th century at night. There would be no pulsing bursts of bright light from our metropolitan areas signalling a vivid message to extra-terrestrial travellers that our planet was a bustling hive of activity. The night side of the Earth, in contrast, would appear to be a mysterious black void...concealing all human presence and activity.

The idea of living without the artificial comfort of modern lighting unsettles me. I grew up in an exurban community without street lights. My street was a small tertiary street located off of a secondary road. Our house was surrounded by large trees. The nights were murky. If I was dropped off late at night I would hasten up the driveway and fumble at the lock. Sometimes an owl would screech in the background and the hairs on the back of my neck would rise amidst a shiver. I never got used to it. I have always felt less threatened in cities where there are lights everywhere and something is always open. If something dangerous is coming for you there at least you can generally see it.

Ekirch's study of night in history is culled from a wide variety of letters, diaries and other primary source materials from the pre-industrial age. According to his research, one facet of night time in earlier cultures was, indeed, fear. 16th and 17th century people often followed elaborate prayer and preparation rituals to ready themselves for the long dark night. Cities were walled and followed strict curfews. The population needed to make haste and find themselves within the walls of the city before night fell. Otherwise they risked being locked out in the relative lawlessness and insecurity of the countryside. Many travellers accounts from this period make mention of the fear they felt at missing the closing of the gates. Ekirch explains that people followed the phases of the moon religiously and planned trips during times when the moon was full and would provide more natural night time illumination. This is why the almanac was the best selling published work of this era.

Criminals plied their trades at night when security was all but non existent. Cities and towns employed the night watch. However these men seemed to realize that they had a thankless and mostly impossible job. The watchmen were often the first victims of the 'night walkers' who carried on their nefarious business mostly undisturbed by the justice system of the day. The night belonged to the criminal, as many sayings of the era went...whereas the day belonged to the honest citizen.

This is not to say that night time was a period of unmitigated despair. One of the most fascinating sections of this book, in my opinion, was the exploration of pre-industrial sleeping patterns: The First Sleep and then The Second Sleep. In brief, earlier generations would go to bed shortly after sun down and sleep for about 4 hours. Then they would awaken around midnight and take an hour or two for visiting, reading, quiet contemplation, prayer or sex. Afterwards, roughly another 4 hours of rest until morning. Eight hours of continuous sleep is not necessarily an instinctive need in humans. It appears to be more of a modern adaptation.

This very readable treatment of a unique topic is recommended for readers who enjoy the history of everyday lives and discussions about how older societies worked. It made me tempted to try to adopt this more archaic sleeping schedule later in life when, hopefully, I will not need to answer to someone else's clock all the time. I find the idea of midnight contemplation, study, and connection (I have a night owl spouse!) somewhat compelling.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book. I'd read Ekirch's theories on sleep in a number of articles, and as an insomnia sufferer, was intrigued by the idea of "broken sleep." In addition, I have a degree in Early Modern history, so I reckoned it was right up my alley. However, although it started well enough, it ended up being one of those books I have to essentially force myself to finish. In fact, I read three other books during the course of reading this one, just to give myself a break from it.
It's not that Ekirch's book is bad, so much as really, really, dull. It is, as others have mentioned, a series of disjointed anecdotes that never seem to go anywhere. In addition, it is incredibly repetitive, as he makes the same points again and again throughout the book, whilst somehow never providing enough commentary of analysis to pull everything together. The entire thing just seems like one quote or citation after another, with little independent thinking on show. Most irritatingly, he doesn't even mention the idea of first and second sleep until the last 50 pages of the book. I think that last section was quite good, and raised some interesting points, but I would have enjoyed the book much more if he had taken out some of Sarah Cowper's endless musings, and replaced them with another hundred pages on the evolution of sleeping patterns. In the end, I feel this book was marketed on somewhat false pretenses, and thus it proved a disappointment.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always fascinated by histories of things you'd never imagine there were histories for (e.g. skunks, masturbation--both coming up in my to-read stack), and this history of night caught my eye at once. I happened upon Ekirch's excellent nocturnal emission reading an article about pre-electricity sleep habits, in that there used to be "first sleep" and "second sleep", separated by a short interval of wakefulness during which people prayed, had sex with each other, or, perhaps most importantly, laid there and thought about things, all things we either do too much or not enough of. This thesis stems largely from Ekirch's researches on what our medieval and early modern forebears thought of and did from dusk til dawn.
Close is broken up into different sections of different aspects of night, some expansive, some fascinatingly nichey. There are excellent sections on sleep (of course), crime, working at night, night and religion, witchcraft, falling into holes, tripping over things, curtains, beds, prostitution, dreaming, and loads more. Ekirch digs into all kinds of source material, not just literature and plays, but legal works, diaries, and medical accounts, giving a well-rounded view of how half the day was considered, used, and feared.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cool idea for a book: what was preindustrial night like? Economics, crime, agriculture, religion, sex, material culture, dreams—it's all here. Seriously impressive feat of research, almost all primary sources, focused on Europe and the American colonies. As an evocation of a whole lost way of life, it is invaluable. As a *book*, it has three big flaws: 1) Misguided structure that makes the first section all about superstitions, astrology, witches' sabbaths, etc. Sort of establishes a groundwork of beliefs that is kind of helpful but also just not very interesting compared with the real world of real people that comes after. 2) Possible over-interpretation of sources, where a metaphor or figure of speech is taken as proof of something about the world or people's beliefs. There's a huge bibliography here, so perhaps Ekrich could have shown more of his work in these cases but picked the snappiest passage to keep the page count down. 3) Pretty lackluster prose. Serviceable, never outright bad, just repetitive and prone to broad claims when he goes too long without a quote to moor him. All these are minor compared to the hoard of good stuff, very recommended.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of night-time before electricity. Apparently, it was really dark. Kind of disappointing beginning - a little too dry and facty - but it soon picked up steam. The author really transports you back by using many, many sources - lots of journals and court records, especially. He illuminates (ha ha) so many rituals people created to deal with utter darkness, and the beliefs and mythologies attached to night-time, which was considered a separate 'season', and shows how most of that was lost or seriously reduced with urbanization, industrialization, and electrification. It's kind of sad really what's become of night-time - a shadow of it's former self so to speak - another victim of humankind's need to conquer everything. I was especially intrigued by the notion of First Sleep. A lovely ode to darkness.

[Layla Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and fast-paced historical look at the history of night in Europe and the New England colonies. I have never read a history text quite like it. Ekrich takes the reader from the 14 to 1500s practices of attempts to secure self and home during the night to the gas lighting revolutions of cities in the late 1700s. One Italian shipbuilding company used to let loose a pack of 10 to 12 mastiffs to roam it's property and prevent thievery at night. Arson was considered such a heinous crime that anyone convicted of it in Britain was given the death penalty. And, contrary to my former belief, people did not necessarily retire to bed at sundown. Many people of varying social classes had only the night for reading, personal reflection, social merriment, and drinking--lots of drinking going on. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys linear narratives of historical periods.

[B. Rule · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic of this book is really fascinating - a social history of nighttime in preindustrial western society. Clearly the author has gathered a huge trove of sources both primary and secondary to illuminate his target. However, I felt like the subject ended up being a little too much for him to handle. Chapters describe all of the horrors and amusements of night, the various associations, folk tales, and aphorisms associated with the darkness. Quotes evoke the fear and the freedom that were once associated with the night. However, the sources are gathered in a fashion that spans centuries and are grouped by topic, not by period. This leads to questions about whether the author paints with too broad a brush in describing his subject. I often felt like his theses were arbitrarily imposed and artificially assembled from disparate evidence.

This feeling grew over the course of the book as he marshaled evidence from the same sources for seemingly contradictory assertions. Was the night a source of fear and fount of legislative restrictions, suitable only for cowering indoors for respectable citizens during the late 17th century, or a time of freedom and unfettered license and entrepreneurial piece-work? Maybe it was both, and it probably was, but I don't feel like there was enough authorial explication to make those connections. Instead, the book is often more of a catalog of the night. Further, when the author describes in the final section the creeping influence of artificial light as the harbinger of rationality on attitudes towards the night season, he quotes many of the same superstitious sources previously quoted for the preindustrial, pre-rationalist view. The primary sources belie a more complicated and vacillating history of people's relation to the darkness and its horrors than the enumerative thematic approach the book uses. This subject is interesting, but it is left to the reader to make some of the theoretical leaps that bring the subject to life.

The book is written in a sort of dry academic tone, but it almost feels like an amateur's mimicry of academia, as it lacks that theorizing impulse that often informs the professional historian. In some ways, it feels like there is some psychological impulse driving Ekirch to compulsively list the connotations of nighttime. There are strange bursts of poetry in the language but most often it feels like a workmanlike effort to exhaustively describe how premodern people felt about the night. That said, his approach avoids too much editorializing and often lets the diaries or depositions bring the time period to life. The end of the book offers some tossed-off lament for the deeper rhythms that existed before artificial lights were ubiquitous, but that position little informs the majority of the text. Despite the shortcomings, I still really enjoyed many parts of the book and felt like I learned a lot. Worth reading as it offers ample inspiration to dream of a different time, even if the author may fail to evoke the dream himself.

[Faith Esker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though at times a bit simplified, Ekirch engages with compelling research on humanity’s tangled history with night and darkness. I would be interested in rereading certain portions as I had to skim sections in order to focus on the passages that were applicable to my particular research interest at the time. Overall, this book was easy to read, presented interesting arguments, and explained some biological aspects of people’s terror of the night that I found intriguing. Worth the read!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

The idea of sleeping in a continuous eight-hour block is relatively recent, and people who can't manage it think they have sleep problems. However, people used to have very different sleep patterns. A fascinating read! If you have trouble sleeping, read this book before starting a medical treatment to help you sleep.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of writing a history of night is brilliant. Considering that half of any human life is spent in the dark, it's amazing that nobody thought to write this book before. Ekirch's treatment of the subject is thorough, but sometimes rambling. He points out that until fairly recent times it was dangerous to be out at night. Or safe to be in at night. It's kind of frightening, actually. Little deterred desperate robbers from breaking in on sleeping people. Those who ventured out only increased the odds of being robbed. For someone who has always maintained that people are basically good, night proves a strong challenge.

It's not all gloom and doom, of course. The book discusses the development of artificial light and the way that it changed night forever. Not only that, but it had theological implications as well (something I discuss on my blog: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World). God created darkness, so it was good. Or God created light so darkness was bad. Depends on how you choose to look at it.

The book isn't laid out chronologically, which is disorienting for me when it comes to histories. It also leads to repetition. Some of us only require minimal reminding that night is dangerous. By the end, however, we've tamed the dark so much that it's now threatened. As with much of life, balance is the important thing.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tour through what night and darkness meant in Early Modern times, and a book that delves into contemporary letters and diaries and guidebooks to reconstruct a time when things did go bump in the night and when neighbourhoods and homes and walled towns saw themselves as little beleaguered islands every night. Ekirch is working in the tradition of the Annales microhistories of the 1970s and 1980s, and, like his French forebears, has a keen eye for local colour and half-forgotten sources. "At Day's Close" walks us through the dangers and expenses of candles and rushlights and torches, through the (well-founded) fear of housebreakers and robbers, through the ways in which the Church and local governments characterised night and the suspect people who were abroad in the Land of Nyx. Well-written, though the text can drag, and sometimes the accumulation of detail is just tedious. All in all, though, a pleasant and sometimes fascinating look at the world before gas and electric lamps, a world where European populations knew that half of every day was spent in a strange and unregulated and terrifying darkness.

[Bett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an interesting topic, this book has. Full of information that one might never have thought of about life in the pre-industrial (or, ‘early modern,’ as the author often says) western world. It took me rather longer to finish than I expected, which I will blame on my shortened attention span after a steady diet of cozy mysteries recently. But I really enjoyed the sensation of existing for a while in that early modern world, where people locked and bolted themselves into their homes after dark for fear of spirits, criminals, and ‘dank night air.’ Such a contrast with our bright, blinking, twittering, 24/7 life.

[Kenghis Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most fascinating, and weird, books I've read in awhile. So much you didn't know about our human past, what we lost with the invention of the light bulb... Crazy.

[Meaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a real gem -- it was excellently written, entertaining, original and well-researched. I discovered many intriguing facts I’d never run across before, and it left me with a lot to think about.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admittedly, many would find this book tedious. One must have a motive other entertainment to read it from beginning to end. I read this book in hopes it would do a bit to satisfy my life-long curiosity about the lives of the common people, my forbears, in Europe before immigration. I did learn some interesting facts, not about my particular family, of course, but the class of peasants they most likely belonged to.
I believe my German relatives who had probably been serfs, then farmers or farm laborers, worked hard in the daylight. They brought their animals into their home at night (for protection and warmth), then went to bed in their clothes (for an earlier morning start or because they had no night clothes) and slept five or more to a bed. I make this connection because they emigrated as a family, homesteaded a farm in the Midwest which remained in the family for more than 100 years. These facts would indicate a familiarity with the skills required for farming.
My Scots-Irish relative left Europe much earlier and seemed to move from country to city and back again. Perhaps he had some education and worked in jobs that required reading and math. One thing I learned from this book was that some people spent their precious candles reading at night, occasionally even starting house fires. Given what I know of his descendants, I would number my Scotch forebears among these people.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading this book off and on for a few years, really! I found it fascinating in the research done and in the tales A. Roger Ekirch told in his book. It took him years to write it, too! The Preface begins with "Let the night teach us what we are, and the day what we should be." and so we learn how night used to be, as in most of life, those with little did the night work, out of sight of those with much, and in power. But everyone had their frightful experiences because of the dark! Toward the end, the gas lamps came to towns along with the beginnings of organized police, and the changes in sleep habits created new biological rhythms in people. He mentions the dimming of the night sky. One must now travel to far outposts, for example, to view the glory of the Milky Way and other previously special constellations. Ekirch ends with a lament of our 24/7 cities: "With darkness diminished, opportunties for privacy, intimacy, and self-reflection will grow more scarce." I enjoyed it thoroughly.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and lyric; Ekirch goes spelunking into the caverns of night in history, and reveals gem after gem along the way. Meticulously researched. And full of surprises. Before light pollution, stars often shone so bright they cast shadow! Ekirch also laments the extinction of first and second sleeps; in antiquity up until the modern era, most people slept in two shifts - when the sun went down, and then woke up later to pray, ponder, visit with one another, and all other sorts of pursuits. As part of this, the dreams of the first sleep were wondered at, allowing dreamers to delve deeper into their psyche and soul than modern humanity. He ends with a warning about experiments to do away with night altogether, a scary thought, although light pollution has already almost done that. A very dense book - you have to be in this for the long haul. But it’s worth it.

[Anna Lorentzon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must agree with previous reviewers that it is full of i teresting facts, sorted into themes. And it reads like notes, not a book. That is the reason it took me a long time to get through it. But, it was very interesting and fits into my interest in human values and perception, how it can and has changed. The big news for me was that sleeping split in two session with a social or meditative hpur or two in the middle of the night.
Thinking of it, when I worked long days and had a small child, that was the only way we had energy gor marital relations, so I may try to revive that old custom.

[K.V. Martins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meticulously researched! How did we spend our time at night in pre-Industrial times? When there were fears of witches and ghosts roaming the darkness? What was 'first sleep' and why don't we do it now? So many fascinating tidbits of history. I read this book when it first came out and second read didn't disappoint. Highly recommended.

[Jennifer Mangler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I chose to read this book because I'd listened to an interview with the author discussing broken sleep and was intrigued. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear in the book until the very last chapter. I am still intrigued by that concept. The rest of the book was mildly interesting (there really are some fascinating bits interspersed throughout) but incredibly repetitive.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good read, Ekirch writes extensively about several curiosities of the night throughout Western history, brought to life through vivid descriptions thanks to (sometimes very niche) sources.

[Unsolicited Book Reports · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://unsolicitedbookreports.com/uns...

“For all these my hard & laborious employments, I never slighted or disregarded my books, ye study of which augmented my understanding, stealing an opportunitie by day, but more by night and that when all was safe in bed, sitting up late”. – John Cannon (1705)

Dear Both,

In recent months, I have dedicated much thought to the “solitary tenant”, described in The Pickwick Papers, who “might be seen poring, by the light of a feeble tallow candle, over a bundle of soiled and tattered papers, yellow with dust and dropping to pieces from age, writing, for the hundredth time, some lengthened statement of his grievances, for the perusal of some great man whose eyes it would never reach, or whose heart it would never touch”. Though relating to this character in many ways, we differ regarding the usage of animal-derived products for light, though not in our continued futile attempts to achieve some recognition from the uncaring powerful. Naturally, this anecdote is a perfect introduction to an unsolicited book report on a text that explores night in preindustrial times and has been one of interest to me since I first learned of the theory of segmented sleep it proposes in the spring of 2018.

“Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of heck”.

– Adapted from Macbeth

At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime

8/10

“Darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power”

– Thomas Hardy

To briefly summarise this book, it opens by describing environmental conditions and the extent of criminality in preindustrial times, both of which were causes of fear for people. Attention is then devoted to the impact of the church and state on people’s lives and their activities and routines when not at work. Next, descriptions are offered of work that was conducted during hours of darkness and what both the wealthy and poor did to enjoy themselves during their downtime. Following an exploration of night-time rituals, the book presents its most fascinating revelation, that of segmented sleep patterns by our preindustrial ancestors.

The purpose of this report is not to condense this text, but rather to relate aspects that might be of interest or amusement. Now, on with the show.

The first thing that must be understood about the world in preindustrial times, is that it was wild, chaotic, and filled with danger. It was a very different place from today with far less land cleared than is at present. This landscape is described as treacherous and attention is given to the percentage of forest cover in countries, i.e. approximately 50% in Italy in 1500 vs. 21% in modern Italy. Even areas that had been cleared for agriculture or habitation, tree stumps, trenches, ditches from where peat was cut, or “abandoned collieries, quarries and coal-pits pocked the ground” exposed people of the time to real danger. Unfortunately, roads were not much better, and quote recounted by Sir John Parnell complains that “There is scarce any journey can be undertaken without some remarkably inconvenient not to say dangerous spots of roads intervening even in the flattest parts of England”.

Even lovers of murder, such as the recipients of this report, would agree that things were out of control in that regard during preindustrial times. “The incidence of murder during the early modern era was anywhere from five to ten times higher than the rate of homicides in England today… While no social rank was spared, the lower orders bore the brunt of brutality, often from the blows of kith and kin”.

Alcohol was a large factor in all this violence, cited as a contributor in approximately 60% of all homicides in early seventeenth-century Stockholm. Particularly, in the “overwhelmingly male atmosphere of drinking houses, violence could follow quickly on the heels of political disputes, ill-chosen words, or cheating at cards”.

Compounding these matters and making life more unpleasant for preindustrial persons, many of the comforts readers of this report are used to, did not exist during preindustrial times. Frigid beds were often warmed with “copper pans of coals or, in modest dwellings, with hot stones wrapped in rags” and nobody had yet thought of ‘electric blankets’ or ‘hot water bottles’. Beds were cold as the objective of residents was not to accidently burn their house down through fires that had not properly been ‘banked’, or left smouldering in a manner that emitted reduced heat.

Light was important for more reasons than writing lengthened statements grievances, and tallow candles were an inexpensive lighting option. Their shaft was made of “animal fat, preferably rendered from mutton that was sometimes mixed with beef tallow”. However, it is reported that these candles gave off a rancid smell due to all the impurities in the fat. It is for this reason that Shakespeare writes in Cymbeline (ca. 1609), of the “Base and unlustrous as the smoky light that’s fed with stinking tallow”. Other disadvantages of candles of this type are that the quality of their light deteriorated as they burned, and they required continual attention in the form of ‘snuffing’ or trimming every fifteen minutes to avoid wasting the dripping molten fat. Further problems were that they required careful storage “so that they would neither melt nor fall prey to hungry rodents”. Their low melting point meant that this class of candles were not suitable in warmer climates and oil lamps were a preferred option in Mediterranean countries, a form of lighting that risked congealing in northern climes during the winter months.

One of my favourite Christian holidays each year is Candlemas (preceded only by Martinmas and Michaelmas). The text provided new insights into this special day, clarifying that it was established in 496 of the common era by Pope Gelasius, where it was intended illumination of the dark by blessed candles would symbolise “God’s dominion over the invisible world” and the “Church’s continual struggle against darkness”.

This book is filled to the brim with fascinating and interesting nuggets of information.

For instance, on the topic of curfews, enforced in many towns, the term ‘curfew’ is reported as originating from the French word couvre-feu, meaning ‘cover-fire’, as families repaired to bed when fires were covered.

A claim by William Harrison is reported that the dog, the ‘mastiff’, used to guard against thieves, derived its name from ‘master-thief’ due to its perceived prowess against intruders.

The word ‘Goodnight’ is derived from “God give you good night”. This is similar to ‘Goodbye’, which from my own reading elsewhere, is derived from ‘God be with ye’.

Whale hunting in the North Atlantic was prevalent during the early eighteenth century for, among other whale-derived products, “a rose-colored liquid wax” found in the head of sperm whales and used to make spermaceti candles. Obtaining this expensive wax was the objective of “Captain Ahab’s vessel, the Pequod, in Moby-Dick (1851)”.

In addition to improvements in human eyesight in the dark in under an hour due the expansion of the iris, “the nocturnal sight of preindustrial populations benefited from consumption of leafy green vegetables and fresh fruit, rich in vitamin A, though availability was largely limited to late spring and summer”. Often though, this was negated by the excess consumption of alcohol.

Benjamin Franklin, coined the phrase “Early to bed and early to rise makes a [hu]man healthy, wealthy, and wise”. It appears to have been based on prevailing wisdom at the time, originally transcribed in the more long-winded form, “By going early to asleep [sic] and early from it [sic], we rise refreshed, lively and active” by the author of An Easy Way to Prolong Life (1775).

Above are recounted what I found, on first reading, to be the most interesting little factoids in the book. There are far more, such as the tradition of ‘bundling’ for young courting couples, which got relegated from the final version of this report.

The topic of reading is given a moderate level of attention in the text, highlighting that, while many people remained unlettered, modern literacy was more prevalent that one might imagine. Indeed, though it was usual that only the clergy could read and write during the late Middle Ages, by the seventeenth century, “a large majority of yeomen and skilled artisans in the English countryside were literate, as were many urban males”. Unfortunately, women had fewer opportunities to learn and were glad of a Protestant movement called pietism during the 1700s that demanded personal study of the bible and, hence, literate females.

Prior to the fifteenth century, reading was generally conducted aloud. It was revolutionary then that around this time silent reading became popular and allowed “individuals scrutinize books with ease and speed”; “explore texts in isolation, apart from friends and family, or masters”; and for books to become “more personal, as more people pondered books and formed ideas on their own”.

Due to feelings of vulnerability, those that lived in preindustrial times were paranoid, suspicious, and superstitious during hours of darkness.

For instance, with regard to the so-called European witch craze from the 15th century onwards, witch hunts are regarded by historians as more likely to occur in areas that were undergoing rapid changes as the feudal system began to collapse around them. “[W]ar, famine, natural disasters, and plague” all intensified the feelings of distress felt by citizens in regions such as these, and, feeling “[m]ore helpless than ever…, increasingly personified their woes by blaming Satan and his minions, many of whom were discovered among the destitute poor roaming the countryside. Caught in the grips of despair, early modern communities projected their anxieties onto society’s most vulnerable members”. It could be argued that human behaviour of this type persists.

The levels of superstition and fear of the supernatural were so great among people, that this was often exploited by thieves and “some rogues masqueraded as demons”; impersonated the devil; or masqueraded as ghosts, wearing white shirts and coating their faces with flour. Seemingly, it was an effective strategy as a pastor in Zürich, Lewes Lavater, is reported as saying in 1572, that criminals of this type “have many times robbed their neighboures in the night time, who supposing they heard the noyse of walking spirites, never went about to drive the theeves away”.

You may recall, from careful reading of previous reports (i.e. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow), the “rustic character Brom Bones and his gang of ‘rough riders’ [who] vandalize Ichabod Crane’s schoolhouse one night ‘so that the poor schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings there’”.

Ever since the, now infamous, ‘who goes there?’ incident of 2015, it has been suggested that I missed my calling as a night-watchman. Even back-in-the-day, a vocation of this type was not desirable, with the text revealing that night-watchmen were generally held in contempt. “These men were not the swashbuckling guards, resplendent in ruffles and silk, portrayed in Rembrandt’s famous painting of Captain Frans Banning Cocq’s militia company, later misnamed The Nightwatch” and did not wear fancy uniforms. Instead, they wore tattered hats, heavy cloaks to keep them warm in the night air, and rags around their head like scarves. Frequently, they were a target for derision by playwrights and poets, including by Shakespeare who takes aim with his representation of the constable Dogberry character in Much Ado About Nothing.

Discouragingly, this book reveals that, unfortunately, some things never change. “Among the hardest workers—night in, night out—were women. Unlike men of middling or plebeian rank, who mostly worked outside the home, many urban wives and daughters confined their days to the domestic realm, except for running errands, performing outdoor chores, or visiting a close neighbour”. Unlike men who worked a limited number of hours, women were always on, and “most… rose earlier than their husbands… [and] had less opportunity during the day to rest”. “’Some respit to husbands the weather may send’, wrote Thomas Tusser in the sixteenth century, ‘but huswives affaires have never an ende’”.

Interestingly, the book shows another side to prostitution, an angle that I had never considered before.

Other than work as seamstresses or servants, there were few opportunities for needy young women with little training, besides prostitution. Though “victimized by violence and venereal disease, prostitutes found a rare measure of autonomy in a trade that defied patriarchal authority”. Indeed, the text argues that workers in this sector were free from the tyranny of parents or husbands and able to do as they pleased, controlling their own bodies and labour, providing they operated independently to the strictures of brothels.

Within the confines of marriage, women did have the power to torment selfish men. In the diary of John Eliot, written in Connecticut, he claimed that his wife gave him “curtain lectures” that were “very frequent, severe & long (every other night almost to the keeping both awake great part of the night [sic] & sometimes every night or night after night) with the most vile & scurrilous language . . . raking up the old stories about a first & second wife, first & second children etc”. Other than reprimanding Eliot for his previous marriages and “spurning his bedtime advances, sometimes his wife insisted that he sleep in another room”.

I could really get behind the Puritans who operated in England and America in the sixteenth century. This crew hated “unnecessary sluggishness” and many “condemned immoderate slumber for its sinful association with idleness and sloth”. Further, they believed that excessive sleep was dangerous to a person’s health causing a “heightened propensity for lechery”, “damaged digestion”, blood that was not properly nourished, and “troubled spirits”. According to the The Schoole of Vertue in 1557, “Much slep ingendereth diseases and payne, / It dulles the wyt and hurteth the brayne”. It was for this reason, an English Puritan, Ralph Thoresby, devised an early alarm clock so that he could rise each morning at five.

It appears, however, that it was not just the eyebrows of Puritans that were raised by excessive time bed. Common adages during the sixteenth century were, “Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool”; and “Nature requires five, custom takes seven, laziness nine, and wickedness eleven”. Wickedness? If you were sleeping eleven hours a night, I’d get some medical help.

While much of the historical documentation supporting this text is weighted towards wealthier and upper class individuals, this is acknowledged when suggesting that “the standard bedtime fell between nine and ten o’clock” for most persons. Comically, bed time was referred to as “Breeches-off time” in Germany.

There are an abundance of references to the Irish throughout the text. One example recounts four men in Castlelyons in the late eighteenth century being charged “with unearthing the recently interred corpse of a woman and removing her fat for a thief’s candle”.

One illuminating portion of the text described how Irish families embraced the occult and folk magic in parallel to Christianity, failing to see any contradiction. Indeed, an eighteenth century poem reads:

“St. Bridget’s cross hung over door,


Which did the house from fire secure . . .


And tho’ the dogs and servants slept,


By Bridget’s care the house was kept.


Directly under Bridget’s cross


Was firmly nail’d the shoe of horse [did Father write this poem?]


On threshold, that the house might be


From witches, thieves, and devils free”.

“In the Irish village of Dereen, probably few residents were as cautious as John ‘of the moon’ O’Donoghue when picking times to tread abroad. He was well known for going home after nightfall by moonlight— ‘I’ll go home with the light of the moon’, he frequently declared. But returning from a tavern on an October night, he stumbled into a ditch and drowned. For earlier that evening John had indulged another habit, drinking large quantities of whiskey and beer”. I know it’s hard to believe, but it appears that an Irish person at some point in history drank too much.

Arthur Young says of the Irish poor, “They steal every thing they can lay their hands on”. It was no wonder then that many historical records describe “anti-Irish mobs”, with one onlooker in 1736 London reporting, “Late that night assembled many hundred disturbers of the peace, proclaiming thro’ the streets a law of their own making, viz. that every Englishman should put out lights in their windows; and then the cry run, Down with the Irish”.

Turning our attention to mentions of Holland in the text, instances are described of Dutch burglars tunnelling under doors and cutting holes in roofs to access their plunder. However, burglaries tended to be more violent in rural areas of The Netherlands, where often families were assaulted, and their house ransacked.

It is stated, too, that there were over five hundred alehouses in Amsterdam during the seventeenth century, nearly as many as an Irish village at that time, presumably, where a “a fatal dispute occurred among four drunken friends over which tavern to visit next”.

At this point in a report, it is usual for me to outline the humour contained in a text. Rather than being a dry and boring piece, At Day’s Close was surprisingly funny and described numerous amusing and comical historical incidents.

For instance, an incident in Geneva is described where a burglar stole items from a bedroom where two persons slept, “not once but twice after an interval of just two hours—even though the victims had awakened to pursue him after the first theft”.

How about having your ears cut off for not acting as a fireman? A comical regulation in France described where “members of the watch had the power to enlist passersby for fire-fighting… [and] [a]ny who refused to help were subject to arrest and, if convicted, having their ears cut off”.

On the subject of the reluctance of, particularly rural households, to opening their doors to unknown visitors, Edward Burt writes, “Upon the trampling of my horses before the house, the lights went out . . . and deafness, at once, seized the whole family”.

Wasting candlelight was judged critically during preindustrial times. “Such was the outrage of the Virginia planter William Byrd II upon discovering his slave Prue with ‘a candle by daylight’ t

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book to read. Very well documented, it tells the story of night during the premodern period. It was interesting when he referred to books I had read but a long time ago, such as Josselin’s diary and Montillau. The book covers about three centuries the fifteenth to the eighteenth. There is a final chapter on the development of street lamps and police in the late 18th and 19th centuries. There is also information about the nature of sleep and what it means to have a first sleep. Night was a time when there was the possibility of privacy. It was also when the working class could become equal with the ruling class. This was destroyed with the advent of light. Not surprisingly the last chapter bemoans the loss of night and sees how it changes the nature of humans. The need for sleep is important or has been in the past. We sleep less than our ancestors did. There was a great deal of crime at night with petty pilfering by servants and slaves. Besides covering three centuries, Ekrich also covers Europe and the United States. He does not do much with Asia or Africa, except to mention the importance of dreams to African cultures. Other senses were enhanced in the nighttime when sight was limited. There were people who worked at nights, bakers, watchmen, some farmers depending on the season. The author sees the night providing freedom and privacy. There was a great deal of drinking and a great deal of fornicating. He talks in detail about the custom of bundling. One gets a sense of how situations changed over time. There was a great fear of fire, understandably. Beds were an important piece of furniture and may have been the most expensive in a household. Many people slept together often. There was time at night for talking. Many farmers and laborers were exhausted by nightfall and went to bed early. It was after midnight and the first sleep that people would often get up and rob others. There was also the danger of walking abroad on moonless nights, particularly if one was drunk since the impact of drink is greatest after 8 pm. There were many ale houses. The beers and ales were safer to drink than much of the water. The animals lived closely with people on the farms. There were lots of bugs and rats in houses and one had to delice one’s hair before bedtime. The detail in this book is rich culled from diaries, census reports, newspapers, judicial records and other such sources. There are over 100 pages of references. One gets a sense of how different life was, how much harder in many ways, but also there seems to have been more human interaction, as well as a connection to the natural world which was dangerous, but also attractive in many ways. Witches and fairies and other creatures were real to people in the nighttime who could not always discern the rational reason for the sounds and sights of which they were aware. In many ways there are underlying human similarities between this time and then. Ekrich quotes dream books, medical treatises that comment on the health and thinking of the time. The rich, of course, lived differently than the poor, but still for all, the major entertainment was with other people. There were masquerades which were very popular as were the holidays. I am always fascinated by the fact that half the year was holidays. There was more respite from working than we currently experience. Women would often stay up at nights spinning in groups and sharing experiences. There was a clear division between the culture of men and women. Reading this book was almost a sensory experience, given all of the details of life. It felt very rich. One could almost experience stumbling home in the dark among familiar landmarks that might take on an unfamiliar aspect if the weather changed. People writing historical novels should read books like these to get a sense of life as it was lived in another time. The way one thinks is changed by the way one lives every day. I didn’t get as much of a feel for the lives of children, but then it was probably similar since households were crowded. Thinking of sleeping on the floor in one’s clothes to be ready for the next day’s work does feel painful, but the idea that the night gave greater freedom is intriguing. People conceived many children after the first sleep. Midwives were important members of the community. Cities were walled and gated and most people were expected to be at home. The night was divided by the color of the darkness, of the sky. The watchmen’s job was mostly to look for fires since they were often no match for the bands of thieves who roamed about.