A history of private life

What Hacker News says

1. swatcoderMay 2026
   It's not as widely promoted, but if you're genuinely interested, there are more of those histories written then you'll ever have time to read yourself.

   There's a classic five volume series "A History of Private Life" that works through a breadth-first survey over time. It can make for a great starting point, and is a bit like an encylopedia in the way you can engage with it as essays on certain times and topics instead of being expected to read it through serially.

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2. rodgerdAug 2021
   Elizabeth Norton's Lives of Tudor Women overlaps somewhat with the period that you're interested in.

   History of Private Life, edited by Aries and Duby - volumes 2 and 3 cover the medieval and renaissance period.

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3. hellonokoFeb 2020
   You might like the book: At Home: A Short History of Private Life, it talks about just this idea.
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4. randcrawDec 2019
   All of these are by Bill Bryson but none are about travel:

   Shakespeare: the World as Stage

   One Summer: America, 1927

   The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

   Made in America: an Informal History of the English Language in the US

   At Home: A Short History of Private Life

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5. clock_towerApr 2017
   Luxury goods traveled very far, even crossing the frontiers of mutually-hostile civilizations, but most commerce was local. As for people, merchants could really travel, mercenaries sometimes did the same, and elites and soldiers would sometimes go abroad and come back, but most people stayed put. Knowledge was also very expensive to come by, and the difference between what the best-educated and worst-educated knew was much larger than it is today. You might find Fernand Braudel's The Structures of Everyday Life interesting; likewise A History of Private Life, especially the first two volumes (the classical world and the Middle Ages), as well as Simplicius Simplicissimus, a novel about the Thirty Years War which was written in the 1670s but is still eminently readable today.

   (Of course, my main area of interest is the early modern period, when Islam was a wall that bisected the world: Muslim merchants could and did travel freely through most of the Old World, but no one else could expect to get through Islam. The pre-Islamic world was more mobile, especially for merchants and mercenaries; likewise the early age of the Mongols, before the Golden Horde and the Il-Khanate converted.)

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6. clock_towerDec 2016
   To answer questions here and in responses, as to what serfs were and how distinct they were or weren't from slaves:

   "Serf" is servus in Latin: literally the word "slave". Serfs began as chattel slaves on late-Roman latifundia, but were tied to the land, not to individual owners, by late Roman laws trying to fight depopulation and keep agriculture running.

   In the Dark Age, the Carolingian period, and the Viking Age, slaves'/serfs' rights increased due to pressure from the Church, while free commoners' rights decreased, often also due to pressure from the Church. By the end of the Viking Age and the beginning of the Middle Ages proper, official documents spoke of "slaves free and unfree"; by the High Middle Ages, land as well as people was servile or free, so that a serf could own free land (which required a cash rent) or a freeman could own servile land (which required labor service). "Own" here meant "lease", but you could literally buy or sell the lease, or borrow money against it.

   A History of Private Life, especially its second and third volumes, and Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages are excellent sources on this.

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