Nineteenth-Century Europe offers a much-needed concise andfresh look at European culture between the Great Revolution inFrance and the First World War. It encompasses all major themes ofthe period, from the rising nationalism of the early nineteenthcentury to the pessimistic views of fin de siècle. It is alucid, fluent presentation that appeals to both students of historyand culture and the general audience interested in Europeancultural history.
The book attempts to see the culture of the nineteenth centuryin broad terms, integrating everyday ways of life into the story asmental, material and social practices. It also highlights ways ofthinking, mentalities and emotions in order to construct a pictureof this period of another kind, that goes beyond a story of"isms" or intellectual and artistic movements.
Although the nineteenth century has often been described as acentury of rising factory pipes and grey industrial cities, as acradle of modern culture, the era has many faces. This book paysspecial attention to the experiences of contemporaries, from thefear for steaming engines to the longing for the pre-industrialpast, from the idle calmness of bourgeois life to the awakeningconsumerism of the department stores, from curious exoticism toincreasing xenophobia, from optimistic visions of future to theexpectations of an approaching end. The century that is only a fewgenerations away from us is strange and familiar at the same time- a bygone world that has in many ways influenced our presentday world.