From eclnews!sinetnews!newssinet!daffy!uwvax!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!gatech!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!news.duke.edu!raphael.acpub.duke.edu!dkelly Tue May 30 16:20:30 1995 Path: eclnews!sinetnews!newssinet!daffy!uwvax!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!gatech!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!news.duke.edu!raphael.acpub.duke.edu!dkelly From: Diane Kelly Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc Subject: Re: 19th Century Sourcebook Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 23:16:19 -0400 Organization: Duke University, Durham, NC, USA Lines: 38 Message-ID: References: <3pifv1$fi5@tiger1.ocs.lsu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: raphael.acpub.duke.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: <3pifv1$fi5@tiger1.ocs.lsu.edu> On 19 May 1995, David A Bonar wrote: > Since I'm interested in using it as background material for > gaming I'll ask here. Does anyone know of a good source book for > details of the 19th century (particularly the early years from 1820 > to around 1860 or so). I'm looking for the usual info. > > beliefs - just how far out were Europeans' beliefs about what might > exist in the relatively unexplored parts of the world? > history - some good comparative timelines with European, Chinese and > Japanese history would be nice to reduce hunting in multiple > books. > technology - the little things. I can find dates for significant > inventions but I'd really like to know about how fast > inventions spread and became common. > Some good sourcebooks on the early 19th century: What Charles Dickens Ate and Jane Austen Knew -- an _extremely_ good book about Victorian English life, with explanations of all those incomprehensible things people speak of in Victorian novels. The Reshaping of Everyday Life, by Jack Larkin -- part of a series on daily life in American history. This one covers approximately 1790-1820 and describes the transition from a republic of small farmers to the beginnings of an urban/industrial society. For info about what the Europeans thought, seek out an old edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittannica -- say 1850 or so. Most good university libraries will have a copy. The early works of Jules Verne are also a good source. For chronology and dates there are several reference books with titles like Timetables of History, The Book of Dates, etc. My particular favorite is one published in 1896, which is full of "current events" for the 1890s. Dig around in the library -- lots of books were published in the 19th century, and they will be better sources than a watered-down modern reference, since the modern reference concentrates on things important to our current world, not the things important at the time. Cambias