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This anthology, drawn from the autobiographies of seven men and women whose lives span the nineteenth century, provides a rare glimpse of the everyday lives of workers in the age of early industrialization in France. Appearing for the first time in English, these stories vividly convey the ambitions, hardships, and reversals of ordinary people struggling to gain a measure of respectability.
The workers' livelihoods are diverse: chair-maker, embroiderer, joiner, mason, silk weaver, machinist, seamstress. Their stories of daily activities, work life, and popular politics are filled with lively, often poignant moments. We learn of dismal, unsanitary housing; of disease; workplace accidents; and terrible hardship, especially for the children of the poor. We read of exploitation and injustice, of courtship and marriage, and of the sociability of the wine-merchant's shop and the boardinghouse.
Traugott's analytic introduction discusses the many shifts in French society during the nineteenth century. Used in combination with other sources, these autobiographies illuminate the relationship between changes in working conditions and in the forms of political participation and protest occurring as the century came to a close.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Jacques Etienne Bede: A Worker in 1820
2. Suzanne Voilquin:
Recollections of a Daughter of the People
3. Agricol Perdiguier: Memoirs of a Compagnon
4. Martin Nadaud: Memoirs of Leonard,
a Former Mason's Assistant
5. Norbert Truquin: Memoirs and Adventures of a
Proletarian in Times of Revolution
6. Jean-Baptiste Dumay: Memoirs of a Militant
Worker from Le Creusot
7. Jeanne Bouvier: My Memoirs
About the author
Mark Traugott is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of Emile Durkheim on Institutional Analysis (1978) and Armies of the Poor (1985).
Summary
An anthology, drawn from the autobiographies of seven men and women whose lives span the nineteenth century. It provides a glimpse of the everyday lives of workers in the age of early industrialization in France. It presents their stories of daily activities, work life, and popular politics.
