Cheung, Neil Hoos, Evan Carver, and so many others at Norton. I am indebted to Ede Rothaus for her knowledgeable help with the artwork. Georges and Valerie Borchardt were critical to the book’s progress. I am deeply appreciative to Georges for his wisdom and good will. I would also like to pay tribute to several old friends: Clyde and Vickie Perdue, John and Mary Carlin, Mary Jane Elkins and her late husband, Bill, and Carolyn and Eddie Hornick. Tobie Cruff was a bulwark for both my wife, Alice, and me.
In 1697, the French expatriate Thomas D’Urfey wrote that “night, love and fate rule the world’s grand affairs.” Certainly, for the better part of two decades, “night” and family have ruled mine. My late parents, Arthur and Dorothy Ekirch, were enormously supportive, as were my sisters, Cheryl and Caryl, and their husbands, Frank and George. My parents-in-law, Keun Pal and Soon Lee, opened their home—and their hearts—during my frequent forays to the Library of Congress. I should also like to thank Anna, Don, Annette, David, and their families. I relied shamelessly upon Don and David for their medical insights. Alice, who does so much good in her own work, repeatedly came to my rescue in the course of this book. For that and so much more, I am profoundly blessed.
Shortly after my arrival in Blacksburg nearly thirty years ago, a wise senior colleague reflected that most academics, as they advance in age, think not of their books but of their children. This book is dedicated with love to Alexandra, Sheldon, and Christian, ever in my thoughts, past, present, and for all tomorrows to come.
PREFACE
Let the night teach us what we are, and the day what we should be.
THOMAS TRYON, 1691 1
T HIS BOOK sets out to explore the history of nighttime in Western society before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. My chief interest lies in the way of life people fashioned after dark in the face of both real and supernatural perils. Notwithstanding major studies on crime and witchcraft, night, in its own right, has received scant attention, principally due to the longstanding presumption that little else of consequence transpired. “No occupation but sleepe, feed, and fart,” to quote the Jacobean poet Thomas Middleton, might best express this traditional mindset. With the exception of enterprising scholars in Europe, historians have neglected the primeval passage from daylight to darkness, especially before the modern era. Nighttime has remained a terra incognita of peripheral concern, the forgotten half of the human experience, even though families spent long hours in obscurity. “We are blind half of our lives,” observed Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Emile (1762). 2
Rather than a backdrop to daily existence, or a natural hiatus, nighttime in the early modern age instead embodied a distinct culture, with many of its own customs and rituals. As a mark of its special nature, darkness in Britain and America was frequently known as the “night season.” Night and day, of course, shared qualities in common, and many differences were a matter of degree and intensity. But along with alterations in diet and health, dress, travel and communication, significant changes arose in social encounters, work rhythms, and popular mores, including attitudes toward magic, sexuality, law, and hierarchical authority. Not only, then, does this book challenge longstanding assumptions about the past scale of nocturnal activity, but it also seeks to resurrect a rich and vibrant culture very different from daily reality, an “alternate reign,” as an English poet put it. More than that, darkness, for the greater part of humankind, afforded a sanctuary from ordinary existence, the chance, as shadows lengthened, for men and women to express inner impulses and realize repressed desires both in their waking hours and in their dreams, however innocent or sinister in nature. A time, fundamentally, of liberation and renewal, night gave free rein
In 1697, the French expatriate Thomas D’Urfey wrote that “night, love and fate rule the world’s grand affairs.” Certainly, for the better part of two decades, “night” and family have ruled mine. My late parents, Arthur and Dorothy Ekirch, were enormously supportive, as were my sisters, Cheryl and Caryl, and their husbands, Frank and George. My parents-in-law, Keun Pal and Soon Lee, opened their home—and their hearts—during my frequent forays to the Library of Congress. I should also like to thank Anna, Don, Annette, David, and their families. I relied shamelessly upon Don and David for their medical insights. Alice, who does so much good in her own work, repeatedly came to my rescue in the course of this book. For that and so much more, I am profoundly blessed.
Shortly after my arrival in Blacksburg nearly thirty years ago, a wise senior colleague reflected that most academics, as they advance in age, think not of their books but of their children. This book is dedicated with love to Alexandra, Sheldon, and Christian, ever in my thoughts, past, present, and for all tomorrows to come.
PREFACE
Let the night teach us what we are, and the day what we should be.
THOMAS TRYON, 1691 1
T HIS BOOK sets out to explore the history of nighttime in Western society before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. My chief interest lies in the way of life people fashioned after dark in the face of both real and supernatural perils. Notwithstanding major studies on crime and witchcraft, night, in its own right, has received scant attention, principally due to the longstanding presumption that little else of consequence transpired. “No occupation but sleepe, feed, and fart,” to quote the Jacobean poet Thomas Middleton, might best express this traditional mindset. With the exception of enterprising scholars in Europe, historians have neglected the primeval passage from daylight to darkness, especially before the modern era. Nighttime has remained a terra incognita of peripheral concern, the forgotten half of the human experience, even though families spent long hours in obscurity. “We are blind half of our lives,” observed Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Emile (1762). 2
Rather than a backdrop to daily existence, or a natural hiatus, nighttime in the early modern age instead embodied a distinct culture, with many of its own customs and rituals. As a mark of its special nature, darkness in Britain and America was frequently known as the “night season.” Night and day, of course, shared qualities in common, and many differences were a matter of degree and intensity. But along with alterations in diet and health, dress, travel and communication, significant changes arose in social encounters, work rhythms, and popular mores, including attitudes toward magic, sexuality, law, and hierarchical authority. Not only, then, does this book challenge longstanding assumptions about the past scale of nocturnal activity, but it also seeks to resurrect a rich and vibrant culture very different from daily reality, an “alternate reign,” as an English poet put it. More than that, darkness, for the greater part of humankind, afforded a sanctuary from ordinary existence, the chance, as shadows lengthened, for men and women to express inner impulses and realize repressed desires both in their waking hours and in their dreams, however innocent or sinister in nature. A time, fundamentally, of liberation and renewal, night gave free rein
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