The French worker : autobiographies from the early industrial era
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The French worker : autobiographies from the early industrial era
University of California Press, c1993
- : hbk
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
: hbk ISBN 9780520079311
Description
This anthology, drawn from the autobiographies of seven men and women whose lives spanned the 19th century, provides a rare glimpse of the everyday lives of workers in the age of early industrialization in France. These stories 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 and seamstress. Their stories of daily activities, work life and popular politics are filled with lively, often poignant moments. We learn of dismal, unsanitary housing, disease, workplace accidents and terrible hardship, especially for the children of the poor. The autobiographies also illuminate the relationship between changes in working conditions and the forms of political participation and protest that occurred as the 19th century drew to a close.
- Volume
-
: pbk ISBN 9780520079328
Description
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.
Table 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
by "Nielsen BookData"