At Day's Close: Night in Times Past

by A. Roger Ekirch

"Remarkable.… Ekirch has emptied night's pockets, and laid the contents out before us." ―Arthur Krystal, The New Yorker Bringing light to the shadows of history through a "rich weave of citation and archival evidence" ( Publishers Weekly ), scholar A. Roger Ekirch illuminates the aspects of life most often overlooked by other historians―those that unfold at night. In this "triumph of social history" ( Mail on Sunday ), Ekirch's "enthralling anthropology" ( Harper's ) exposes the nightlife that spawned a distinct culture and a refuge from daily life. Fear of crime, of fire, and of the supernatural; the importance of moonlight; the increased incidence of sickness and death at night; evening gatherings to spin wool and stories; masqued balls; inns, taverns, and brothels; the strategies of thieves, assassins, and conspirators; the protective uses of incantations, meditations, and prayers; the nature of our predecessors' sleep and dreams―Ekirch reveals all these and more in his "monumental study" ( The Nation ) of sociocultural history, "maintaining throughout an infectious sense of wonder" ( Booklist ).

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Anthropology, Historical, Sociology, Nature

488 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recall reading somewhere that around half the population of the modern UK have never seen the Milky Way. I don’t know whether that’s true but I find it believable, and a good indicator of how far we have moved from the nighttime world of our ancestors of just a few centuries ago. Many people today will never have experienced the absolute blackness of a moonless night away from artificial lighting. It’s that world that the author tries to recreate in this book. Incidentally the book only considers Europe and North America, and mainly the British Isles.

The author openly admits that he relies heavily on diaries, journals etc from the past. I would say that the book is predominantly made up of quotes from such sources. Whether other readers would enjoy this book will therefore depend on whether they like that sort of format. I have a penchant for social history so didn’t mind it, though there were sections that felt a bit repetitive.

Much of this book won’t be exactly revelatory to people. The first chapter covers beliefs in demons, ghosts, witches etc, the second features criminality. No-one will be surprised that these activities were associated with night-time, though it’s still moderately interesting to read some of the details. I have shared a few of the passages that I highlighted whilst reading.

The sections I enjoyed most were those that related to the particular rituals and customs associated with night-time, that have now vanished. See the highlights for a description of how walled cities were closed off at night. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is quoted, relating an occasion where he failed to make it back to Geneva before the gates came down, leaving him stranded outside the city walls at night. There was also an interesting discussion about the social role of the most popular form of aristocratic entertainment at night, the masked ball. In pre-modern times social relations within the aristocracy were tightly controlled by rules of etiquette, but “By stripping persons of their identity, they [the balls] undermined distinctions between social ranks, with all revelers recreated equal.”

Nighttime was a period when the social order was reversed in another sense, when slaves, servants, vagrants etc took control and often consciously revenged themselves on the upper echelons, through actions such as theft, vandalism, and arson, perpetrated under cover of darkness. Those actions posed a threat to the existing social order, though there was another aspect in which nighttime violence upheld prevailing moral standards. This was in what was known in England as the “Skimmington ride” (or Skimity ride), a form of vigilante activity that involved public humiliation of those adjudged to have breached community morals. This ritual apparently features in Thomas Hardy’s novel The Mayor of Casterbridge, but I haven’t read that. Some might call it community justice, others might call it mob justice – take your pick.

There’s also a discussion about the past practice - a commonplace one – of “the two sleeps” where people would wake in the middle of the night for an hour or two of quiet wakefulness. Writers up to the 19th century refer to this in ways that make it clear the authors saw it as something so normal it did not require explanation, and yet it is almost unknown today.

One feature of the book using lots of quotes is that I kept checking the notes for the source material, and in consequence I’ve probably added about another dozen books to my already bloated TBR list. Oh well!

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my imagination, this book was incisive, poetic, amusing and able to offer a narrative that would make me want to listen to the Clair de Lune and read Seven Gothic Tales. In reality, this book is the reason that academics invented the word "undertheorized." Filled with scintillating revelations like "the devil is associated with nighttime," and piles of research notes organized into themes. There is no excuse for a boring book when your material includes fairy hills and witches' sabbaths. That's just lazy.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some breathtaking revelations in this book--particularly the news (to me) that preindustrial people enjoyed two sessions of sleep each night, separated by a period of meditative wakefulness.

Unfortunately, I found Ekirch's style a bit tiresome. It felt like he was throwing diced-up primary sources at me. A typical paragraph:

General statement about nighttime that is either a) completely interesting and new, or b) tired and obvious. "Quote A," context for Quote A. Context for Quote B: "Quote B." "Quote C," context for Quote C. "Another quote from Quote C source."

Because of this pacing, it felt a little bit like someone's thesis. Granted, I don't believe anyone's ever done something like this before--examine nighttime in preindustrial Western Europe and North America--so, like I said, some great tidbits.

I was frustrated by the end, but THEN this sentence appeared on page 336, and I felt better about having trudged through all of Ekirch's previous sentences: "Labor discipline in a Lancashire cotton mill during the 1830s entailed parading the effigy of a ghost across the shop floor at night to deter child workers from sleeping." Mind blown.

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

In these days of electricity, neon and light pollution, it's hard to imagine just how DARK it must have been in times before artificial illumination. At set of sun, darkness descended, and superstition and worry ran rampant. Fearing robbers and murderers, doors were barred, prayers were said, and a fretful sleep was had until dawn lit the skies once again.


Adriaen Brouwer, Dune Landscape by Moonlight

But not everyone stayed indoors. While gathering gloom inspired fear in some, others finally felt free from society's constraints - "...the darkness of night loosened the tethers of the visible world." The onset of night encouraged drinking, card playing and other activities frowned upon by clergy. There were many recorded cases of people stumbling about in the dark, tumbling into ditches, ravines and rivers...though alcohol frequently played as much a part in their missteps as lack of light. For others, nightfall meant an end to the day's labor and "a welcome truce from daily toil."


William Hogarth, Night

Ekirch provides information on just about everything associated with night through history, from bedding to sleep habits to man's earlier efforts to create light. Some chapters dragged and seemed a bit repetitious, but on the whole, this is a fascinating look at all aspects of nocturnal human behavior.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author had my full attention based only his topic choice: the history of night time. Unfortunately, after choosing the topic, the author did not then go on to write a book. He wrote a very long list of incidents that his research found happened at night. Where he got his information or any context as to why this was important to people at the time isn't worked into the text. I would have loved to hear about why people thought it was important to record how many people fell into holes at night in some small town in Europe in the middle ages, instead of a list of how many people fell and where and when.
Reading this book feels like reading the notes Ekirch took for himself for a book he is going to write. I would still be excited to read about the history of night time if he ever writes an actual book about it.

[GoldGato · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s difficult for any of us living today to imagine what life was like before the advent of electric lighting. One of my neighbours is over the age of 100 and she does remember being a child on a farm without electricity, where the rising and the setting of the sun determined one’s day and one’s activities. But at least she still had precious kerosene lanterns, which she says she considered to be the most current technology they had on her family’s isolated farmstead. Imagine life without anything, at best just a candle, when night arrived each evening! This book provides the history of how mankind endured, and thrived, through the millennia before industrial times changed everything.

The Prince hath no advantage over his subjects, when they are both asleep.

Night was mankind’s first enemy. Unlike other creatures, humans became weaker during the night, lost without a full moon to stay safe from nocturnal predators. That fear evolved into the superstitions which became part of folklore and mythology and religion in every corner of the earth. Villagers believed demons and spirits took over when day left, resulting in the witchhunts and the burnings of innocent people…all because there was a lack of cheap and available lighting. Nighttime was also when criminals excelled, particularly when there was only one or two watchmen on duty. The old Scottish proverb, ”he that does ill hates the light” is still relevant today but was especially significant into the early twentieth century. For the mighty and the rich may have been atop society during the day, but at night, the smallest and the weakest could wreak havoc.

When Ave Maria you hear, see that your house be near.

The word, “curfew”, originated from the French for “cover-fire”. When this fire was “covered”, it meant the gates of walled cities would be closed and anyone caught outside would have to wait until daytime arrived before they could go back home. In some instances, this resulted in stampedes and drownings as panicked residents ran back to get inside, only to be trampled or to fall into moats. How mankind survived it all is amazing, yet few of us think of how easy it is for us now. Of course, we now have light noise, so much so that it becomes more and more difficult to see the night sky, particularly with the advent of LED lighting.

This book is simply packed with facts galore. The author really did his job doing the research, but it reads as though it was written to comply with a college professor’s publication requirement. Every paragraph is crammed with factoids in quotations, which was difficult for me to establish a reading flow. So, four stars for knowledge and two stars for writing equals a solid three-star read.

Book Season = Winter (knitted sleeves of nature)

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history of night-time in the early modern period was both appropriate and frustrating as an insomnia book. I read parts of it after waking up in the middle of the night on several occasions. As well as being thematically appropriate it was also rather stolid, which may have helped me drift back to sleep. Ekirch’s themes are the activities, cultural perceptions, and material details of nighttime in the West before the transformation of electric light. He draws upon sources including diaries, books, plays, poetry, and court records, as well as including a pleasingly large number of illustrations. The most compelling parts for me were accounts of how darkness provided a measure of freedom to the oppressed:

Night, by contrast, was neither a set piece of ritual license nor a temporary escape from reality. Instead, it represented an alternate reality for a substantial set of the preindustrial population, a realm of its own that, at a minimum, implicitly challenged the institutions of the workaday world. As a resident of Maryland said of slaves, “Though you have them slaves all the day, they are not so in the night.”

Less thought-provoking was the material on crimes that took place in the dark, which became rather repetitive. I enjoyed the discussion of sleeping habits and dreams, which managed to avoid romanticising pre-electricity sleeping habits until the very end of the book. As Ekirch points out, just because the pre-industrial population weren’t kept awake by light, it does not follow that they all slept well. Illness, cold, bed sharing, bugs, marauders, fire, and concerns about all of the above prevented sleep very effectively. He is nonetheless rather fascinated by the first and second sleep structure that apparently resulted when people went to bed earlier. Those who habitually stayed up later, which is now all of us, instead tended not to have a two hour gap between blocks of sleep. Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams has further details of the debate on how ‘natural’ this habit of sleep might be.

Although the whole did not make much of an impact on me, parts of ‘At Day’s Close’ were striking and thought-provoking. I think it could perhaps have been edited down to shorter length. Also, Ekirch is American and this is sometimes evident in word choices that grated on me. Specifically, he repeatedly uses ‘besotted’ as a synonym for drunk, whereas I think of it as a synonym for infatuated. The former is not wrong as such, but the latter is much more common.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember the great north eastern blackout of 2003. It was an unsettling night spent in our home...at the time located in a borderline sketchy area...looking out the window into utter blackness...hearing sirens in the distance and the occasional gunshot to the east. How we missed the simple act of flicking a switch to bring light (not to mention air conditioning! It was August.) My husband and I spent a long evening talking and keeping one ear to the door. One of the most fascinating relics of this experience was the aerial view of Earth taken from the Space Station on that night. The entire north east quadrant of the United States was bathed in darkness. It was an eerie image for most of us who have lived our entire lives under the constant glow of artificial illumination.

At Day's Close: Night in Times Past is a truly fascinating exploration of night time in pre-industrial society. What was the populations relationship to darkness? How did they sleep? How different was their society from our 24-hour lifestyle? Was it dangerous? Was it more peaceful? These are not questions I had ever contemplated before reading a review of this book about a year ago. However, I found the topic to be most intriguing once I began reading.

Imagine how the earth, as viewed from the sky, appeared in the 16th century at night. There would be no pulsing bursts of bright light from our metropolitan areas signalling a vivid message to extra-terrestrial travellers that our planet was a bustling hive of activity. The night side of the Earth, in contrast, would appear to be a mysterious black void...concealing all human presence and activity.

The idea of living without the artificial comfort of modern lighting unsettles me. I grew up in an exurban community without street lights. My street was a small tertiary street located off of a secondary road. Our house was surrounded by large trees. The nights were murky. If I was dropped off late at night I would hasten up the driveway and fumble at the lock. Sometimes an owl would screech in the background and the hairs on the back of my neck would rise amidst a shiver. I never got used to it. I have always felt less threatened in cities where there are lights everywhere and something is always open. If something dangerous is coming for you there at least you can generally see it.

Ekirch's study of night in history is culled from a wide variety of letters, diaries and other primary source materials from the pre-industrial age. According to his research, one facet of night time in earlier cultures was, indeed, fear. 16th and 17th century people often followed elaborate prayer and preparation rituals to ready themselves for the long dark night. Cities were walled and followed strict curfews. The population needed to make haste and find themselves within the walls of the city before night fell. Otherwise they risked being locked out in the relative lawlessness and insecurity of the countryside. Many travellers accounts from this period make mention of the fear they felt at missing the closing of the gates. Ekirch explains that people followed the phases of the moon religiously and planned trips during times when the moon was full and would provide more natural night time illumination. This is why the almanac was the best selling published work of this era.

Criminals plied their trades at night when security was all but non existent. Cities and towns employed the night watch. However these men seemed to realize that they had a thankless and mostly impossible job. The watchmen were often the first victims of the 'night walkers' who carried on their nefarious business mostly undisturbed by the justice system of the day. The night belonged to the criminal, as many sayings of the era went...whereas the day belonged to the honest citizen.

This is not to say that night time was a period of unmitigated despair. One of the most fascinating sections of this book, in my opinion, was the exploration of pre-industrial sleeping patterns: The First Sleep and then The Second Sleep. In brief, earlier generations would go to bed shortly after sun down and sleep for about 4 hours. Then they would awaken around midnight and take an hour or two for visiting, reading, quiet contemplation, prayer or sex. Afterwards, roughly another 4 hours of rest until morning. Eight hours of continuous sleep is not necessarily an instinctive need in humans. It appears to be more of a modern adaptation.

This very readable treatment of a unique topic is recommended for readers who enjoy the history of everyday lives and discussions about how older societies worked. It made me tempted to try to adopt this more archaic sleeping schedule later in life when, hopefully, I will not need to answer to someone else's clock all the time. I find the idea of midnight contemplation, study, and connection (I have a night owl spouse!) somewhat compelling.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book. I'd read Ekirch's theories on sleep in a number of articles, and as an insomnia sufferer, was intrigued by the idea of "broken sleep." In addition, I have a degree in Early Modern history, so I reckoned it was right up my alley. However, although it started well enough, it ended up being one of those books I have to essentially force myself to finish. In fact, I read three other books during the course of reading this one, just to give myself a break from it.
It's not that Ekirch's book is bad, so much as really, really, dull. It is, as others have mentioned, a series of disjointed anecdotes that never seem to go anywhere. In addition, it is incredibly repetitive, as he makes the same points again and again throughout the book, whilst somehow never providing enough commentary of analysis to pull everything together. The entire thing just seems like one quote or citation after another, with little independent thinking on show. Most irritatingly, he doesn't even mention the idea of first and second sleep until the last 50 pages of the book. I think that last section was quite good, and raised some interesting points, but I would have enjoyed the book much more if he had taken out some of Sarah Cowper's endless musings, and replaced them with another hundred pages on the evolution of sleeping patterns. In the end, I feel this book was marketed on somewhat false pretenses, and thus it proved a disappointment.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always fascinated by histories of things you'd never imagine there were histories for (e.g. skunks, masturbation--both coming up in my to-read stack), and this history of night caught my eye at once. I happened upon Ekirch's excellent nocturnal emission reading an article about pre-electricity sleep habits, in that there used to be "first sleep" and "second sleep", separated by a short interval of wakefulness during which people prayed, had sex with each other, or, perhaps most importantly, laid there and thought about things, all things we either do too much or not enough of. This thesis stems largely from Ekirch's researches on what our medieval and early modern forebears thought of and did from dusk til dawn.
Close is broken up into different sections of different aspects of night, some expansive, some fascinatingly nichey. There are excellent sections on sleep (of course), crime, working at night, night and religion, witchcraft, falling into holes, tripping over things, curtains, beds, prostitution, dreaming, and loads more. Ekirch digs into all kinds of source material, not just literature and plays, but legal works, diaries, and medical accounts, giving a well-rounded view of how half the day was considered, used, and feared.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cool idea for a book: what was preindustrial night like? Economics, crime, agriculture, religion, sex, material culture, dreams—it's all here. Seriously impressive feat of research, almost all primary sources, focused on Europe and the American colonies. As an evocation of a whole lost way of life, it is invaluable. As a *book*, it has three big flaws: 1) Misguided structure that makes the first section all about superstitions, astrology, witches' sabbaths, etc. Sort of establishes a groundwork of beliefs that is kind of helpful but also just not very interesting compared with the real world of real people that comes after. 2) Possible over-interpretation of sources, where a metaphor or figure of speech is taken as proof of something about the world or people's beliefs. There's a huge bibliography here, so perhaps Ekrich could have shown more of his work in these cases but picked the snappiest passage to keep the page count down. 3) Pretty lackluster prose. Serviceable, never outright bad, just repetitive and prone to broad claims when he goes too long without a quote to moor him. All these are minor compared to the hoard of good stuff, very recommended.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of night-time before electricity. Apparently, it was really dark. Kind of disappointing beginning - a little too dry and facty - but it soon picked up steam. The author really transports you back by using many, many sources - lots of journals and court records, especially. He illuminates (ha ha) so many rituals people created to deal with utter darkness, and the beliefs and mythologies attached to night-time, which was considered a separate 'season', and shows how most of that was lost or seriously reduced with urbanization, industrialization, and electrification. It's kind of sad really what's become of night-time - a shadow of it's former self so to speak - another victim of humankind's need to conquer everything. I was especially intrigued by the notion of First Sleep. A lovely ode to darkness.

[Layla Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and fast-paced historical look at the history of night in Europe and the New England colonies. I have never read a history text quite like it. Ekrich takes the reader from the 14 to 1500s practices of attempts to secure self and home during the night to the gas lighting revolutions of cities in the late 1700s. One Italian shipbuilding company used to let loose a pack of 10 to 12 mastiffs to roam it's property and prevent thievery at night. Arson was considered such a heinous crime that anyone convicted of it in Britain was given the death penalty. And, contrary to my former belief, people did not necessarily retire to bed at sundown. Many people of varying social classes had only the night for reading, personal reflection, social merriment, and drinking--lots of drinking going on. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys linear narratives of historical periods.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is fat with facts and too skinny with narrative. I learned a lot—some fascinating practices and beliefs!—but the book would have profited from a selection of fewer representative examples coupled with more storytelling. Nevertheless, I applaud the author for introducing us to the second half of the day. He writes clearly, poetically, and convincingly. I never realized how little I knew about the history of nighttime.

[B. Rule · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic of this book is really fascinating - a social history of nighttime in preindustrial western society. Clearly the author has gathered a huge trove of sources both primary and secondary to illuminate his target. However, I felt like the subject ended up being a little too much for him to handle. Chapters describe all of the horrors and amusements of night, the various associations, folk tales, and aphorisms associated with the darkness. Quotes evoke the fear and the freedom that were once associated with the night. However, the sources are gathered in a fashion that spans centuries and are grouped by topic, not by period. This leads to questions about whether the author paints with too broad a brush in describing his subject. I often felt like his theses were arbitrarily imposed and artificially assembled from disparate evidence.

This feeling grew over the course of the book as he marshaled evidence from the same sources for seemingly contradictory assertions. Was the night a source of fear and fount of legislative restrictions, suitable only for cowering indoors for respectable citizens during the late 17th century, or a time of freedom and unfettered license and entrepreneurial piece-work? Maybe it was both, and it probably was, but I don't feel like there was enough authorial explication to make those connections. Instead, the book is often more of a catalog of the night. Further, when the author describes in the final section the creeping influence of artificial light as the harbinger of rationality on attitudes towards the night season, he quotes many of the same superstitious sources previously quoted for the preindustrial, pre-rationalist view. The primary sources belie a more complicated and vacillating history of people's relation to the darkness and its horrors than the enumerative thematic approach the book uses. This subject is interesting, but it is left to the reader to make some of the theoretical leaps that bring the subject to life.

The book is written in a sort of dry academic tone, but it almost feels like an amateur's mimicry of academia, as it lacks that theorizing impulse that often informs the professional historian. In some ways, it feels like there is some psychological impulse driving Ekirch to compulsively list the connotations of nighttime. There are strange bursts of poetry in the language but most often it feels like a workmanlike effort to exhaustively describe how premodern people felt about the night. That said, his approach avoids too much editorializing and often lets the diaries or depositions bring the time period to life. The end of the book offers some tossed-off lament for the deeper rhythms that existed before artificial lights were ubiquitous, but that position little informs the majority of the text. Despite the shortcomings, I still really enjoyed many parts of the book and felt like I learned a lot. Worth reading as it offers ample inspiration to dream of a different time, even if the author may fail to evoke the dream himself.

[Faith Esker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though at times a bit simplified, Ekirch engages with compelling research on humanity’s tangled history with night and darkness. I would be interested in rereading certain portions as I had to skim sections in order to focus on the passages that were applicable to my particular research interest at the time. Overall, this book was easy to read, presented interesting arguments, and explained some biological aspects of people’s terror of the night that I found intriguing. Worth the read!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

The idea of sleeping in a continuous eight-hour block is relatively recent, and people who can't manage it think they have sleep problems. However, people used to have very different sleep patterns. A fascinating read! If you have trouble sleeping, read this book before starting a medical treatment to help you sleep.

[Andrew Reece · Rating 5 out of 5]

A. Roger Ekirch Studies Western Civilization's Relationship With Nightfall In Europe & North America During The Pre-Industrial Age.

Since time immemorial, mankind has possessed a uniquely fascinating relationship with darkness and the nightfall, particularly during historical eras which predate the invention of electric light, and while many aspects of that connection have come to be associated with peril, misfortune, and nightborne terror, there are also facets that possess incomparable beauty and unrivaled allure. Who can deny the ethereal sense of passion which arises from listening to the haunting nocturne, a darkly melancholic strain of music whose entire existence was inspired by the Cimmerian twilight, or compare with the magnificent splendor of gazing upon the full moon's fair countenance on a clear, starry night?

When at last the careless sun sinks beneath the western horizon each evenfall, a wondrous mythical and temporal world of fantastic sights and sounds emerges for humanity to explore, but for our predecessors this shadowy nether realm possessed a sinister undertone, one which caused them to secure their houses and their loved ones behind closed doors, make the sign of the "evil eye", and hurry home in the meager light of dusk to make safe their valuables. Bandits, highwaymen, and burglars prowled the night in search of quick profit, and fearsome wild animals stalked the desolate landscape in search of prey for sustenance, while the pitch-black terrain created hazards that became lethal without the light of day to reveal their otherwise commonplace features in the shadowy gloom.

A. Roger Ekirch's 2005 At Day's Close: Night in Times Past is an ambitious undertaking, one which seeks to provide an episodic anthropological history of night as it was experienced by Western Civilization before the Industrial Revolution - more specifically, it encompasses the approximate period of 1500-1750 CE, but the author ventures as far back as the Middle Ages and as far forward as the beginning of the nineteenth century. The 339-page main text is divided into four parts: In the Shadow of Death, Laws of Nature, Benighted Realms, and Private Worlds, and split into twelve chapters which feature inventive names such as Terrors of the Night: Heavens and Earth, Unraveling the Knitted Sleeve: Disturbances, and Sleep We Have Lost: Rhythms and Revelations. There are a total of 59 black and white and 12 full-color illustrations in Ekirch's remarkable study, alongside 73 pages of expanded notes and an index at the back of the volume. Each chapter assumes the form of a collection of anecdotal tales which methodically limn for the reader the remarkably rich subject matter as the author weaves his milieu of the night as our ancestors most vicariously lived through it, first-hand.

Chapter 1, Terrors of the Night: Heaven and Earth addresses the assortment of superstitions that societies in Europe and colonial North America stubbornly clung to during this historical period, and they include mass hysteria, lunar beliefs, fear of contagion, and most prominently, the spirit realm. Fairies, pixies, will-o'-the-wisps, ghosts, hobgoblins and vampires are but a handful of the nocturnal legends discussed, but there were also more disquieting examples such as witches which involved living people and usually ended in a dire result for the individual in question after they underwent whatever sham procedures were fabricated to determine their guilt or innocence. Ekirch also covers other interesting topics such as poor visibility at night, alcohol consumption, and urban dangers related to poorly paved roads and thoroughfares, garbage, and the famous cries of "Gardy-loo!" (Mind the water!).

Chapter 2, Mortal Perils: Plunder, Violence, and Fire devotes its first portion towards the subject of thefts and burglaries, and Ekirch reports that the majority of thefts generally occurred from late autumn to early spring, which was when the night hours were longest, and that burglars would often utilize ruses that involved masquerading as ghosts or demons to take advantage of victims' superstitious beliefs. Criminals operated in large gangs in some cities, and occasionally utilized battering rams and other tools to gain entry into dwellings, while more enterprising thieves would tie string across dark, narrow alleyways, hoping to trip up their targets before robbing them in the street. Rogues were thought to practice the magic arts, and even possessed their own superstitions, with Moonwort and Mandrake thought to have been imbued with mystical unlocking properties, while others believed that consuming a meal at the house, sometimes with the unwilling occupants, somehow absolved them from blame or made their crimes impossible to detect.

Nighttime fires proved to be a pervasive threat in pre-modern Europe and colonial America, and Ekirch offers some convincing statistics for his readers that definitely put the subject into a sobering perspective, with an example citing that from the period between 1500-1800, English rural towns experienced at least 46 fires destroying 100 or more houses out of a total of at least 467 fires, with the remainder burning ten or more houses, whether the cause originated in an errant breeze, a careless servant, or a bolt of lightning during a fierce rainstorm. The penalties for arson were unbelievably harsh, and oftentimes burglars would attempt to camouflage their crimes by starting a fire to destroy any evidence, or else set them beforehand and loot the domiciles in the resulting upheaval. Arson was also employed by bands of workers attempting to strike at wealthy landowners, and there were also "opportunists" whom would take advantage of a fire's compromising circumstances to commit larceny while ostensibly helping the victims escape to safety.

In Chapter 3, The Fragility of Authority: Church and State, the author discusses urban fortifications, curfews, nocturnal religious gatherings, night watchmen, and twilight laws and ordinances. He explains that certain areas in Europe had a higher concentration of walled towns, such as the Netherlands which had an estimated two hundred in the sixteenth century, while less geographically-exposed locales like England had comparatively fewer, at just over one hundred for the latter. He also cites London's network of gates as a vital defense for the inhabitants against "rogues of all stripes" and describes the harrowing scene which unfolded after a guardsman attempted to capitalize financially on a traveling fair that had been taking place one evening at the city of Augsburg's Der Einlasse "(the wicket-gate)", by tolling the evening bell half an hour early, with the resulting loss of life due to the densely packed crowds ultimately leading to a savage punishment for the offending sergeant. Regulations which periodically prohibited the use of hooded cloaks or large, oversized hats, as well as masks that might conceal a pedestrian's identity were regularly enforced, and lanterns were required nighttime accessories. "The purpose of these regulations, widespread throughout Europe, was, instead, to allow authorities to monitor citizens when the need for oversight was greatest."

The night's watch, Ekirch reports, may be society's oldest profession, although certain cities employed deviations such as Venice's armed guards, the sbirri, and the protectors of the Venetian Arsenal, the guardiani di notte, and still others enlisted animal assistance such as the fortified northern French town of Saint Malo's pack of patrolling mastiffs, a practice that dated back to the thirteenth century, and the Parisian Guet, which utilized twelve horse sergeants to conduct night patrols. Some patrols chanted rhymes or sang songs to comfort the people over whom they kept watch, or to inform them of "how the night was passing." : "Ho, watchman, ho! / Twelve is the clock! / God keep our town / from fire and brand, / Twelve is the clock!" Later the author emphasizes the fact that many laws were harsher in the evening hours, when business transactions were suspended altogether due to the belief that any commerce conducted after the sun had set carried with it an air of duplicity, and even states that in matters of inheritance, in certain areas a will would be required to be read in the presence of three sources of light to be considered valid.

Discussed in Chapter 4, A Man's House is his Castle: Domestic Fortifications, many townspeople during the pre-industrial era believed in popular magic and the occult, regularly consulting soothsayers as a way to combat night's manifold dangers and achieve an extra sense of security, also relying on magical talismans which were fashioned using a wide variety of items ranging from horse skulls and dried urine to broken glass and alligator teeth. Ekirch's fascinating digression regarding the different types of fuel sources describes numerous materials such as coal and peat moss, but none were as effective or as valued as North England and Wales' "candle coal", a kind of bituminous or "pit" coal that burned with a radiant flame and minimal smoke due to its high caloric value, and the author also covers beeswax candles, oil lamps, and rushes as alternate sources of light. He addresses teamwork and strength in numbers as possibly the most effective method of staying safe in dark times: "Although duties were fewer and families more isolated, people continued to help one another at all hours. Some performed small acts of kindness, such as lending a candle to a neighbor. Late one spring night in 1645, the Essex household of Ralph Josselin received two pounds of fresh butter. 'Here was a providence suited to our necessitys,' Josselin delighted. Unlike the reception given strangers after dark, friends and relatives were normally welcome, all the more when they were expected."

Chapter 5, Darkness Visible: Navigating the Nightscape is all about traversing the dangerous nighttime environments during this harrowing historical period. Oftentimes, parents would send children on brief, pre-conceived twilight errands such as collecting berries or firewood to slowly acclimate them with the concept of performing necessary tasks after dark, while late-night games and contests such as "Fox and Hounds", "Bogle about the Stacks", and "Can I Get There by Candle Light?" were sometimes played as an additional way to diminish childhood fears. Ekirch provides fascinating information regarding man's ability to see in the dark, and also describes the role of the linkboy, a pre-modern light-bearing guide whom was familiar with the surrounding area. "In most towns and cities, one could hire a linkboy for a small sum. These for the most part, were orphans or other impoverished adolescents who, for a pedestrian's benefit, carried links (torches) or, less often, lanterns. In some English communities, they were nicknamed mooncursers, for the harm done their trade by moonlight."

In Chapter 6, Works of Darkness: Labor, Ekirch examines nighttime professions and work-related gatherings in the pre-modern era, from Parisian waffle-vendors called oublieurs to nightmen, hard-working laborers to whom fell the unenviable task of emptying the town's outhouses and underground cesspools. The author contends that certain tasks were best left to the evening hours, and the extreme temperatures required for glass-blowing and iron-smelting furnaces made those occupations well-suited to twilight, as did the decreased element of danger for the destruction of bees and wasps' nests in farms and orchards. Oftentimes the women of villages and towns would gather at night to socialize while engaging in work that could easily be done in a group setting such as clothes-washing, corn-husking, and even herring-fishing in some areas, but sewing was the most popular activity for these gatherings. "The predominant type of social work, especially during winter months, was the spinning or knitting bee, of which there were numerous variations - for example, veillées in France, Spinnstuben, Rockenstuben, and Lichstuben in Germany, Russian posidelki, and veglia in Tuscany."

Discussed in Chapter 7, The Common Benefactress: Sociability, Sex, and Solitude, the author briefly analyzes the nocturnal routines of two seventeenth-century middle-class Europeans, David Beck of The Hague, in the Netherlands, and Samuel Pepys of Restoration London, and concludes that their social habits were very similar; they both regularly enjoyed the company of friends and family, with Pepys' tastes also branching into card games, some of which included whist, brag, cribbage, backgammon, and quadrille. Alehouses, inns and taverns remained popular places for social congregation, but Ekirch also devotes attention to the solitary pursuit of wisdom during the night's latest hours. "Within well-educated households, the critical transition from reading aloud to silent reading occurred during the fifteenth century. In time, other readers would master this liberating technique. Revolutionary in scope, silent reading let individuals scrutinize books with ease and speed. No less important, it allowed them to explore texts in isolation, apart from friends and family."

Chapter 8, Knightwalkers: Princes and Peers is concerned with the entertainments of the upper classes, namely balls, concerts, opera, and masquerades, and Ekirch briefly explores such festive occasions as the 1661 Florentine opera The Horse Dance and France's 1653 Le Ballet de la Nuit, a night ballet hosted in King Louis XIV's honor that had been written by the famous French poet and playwright Isaac de Benserade. He also examines the life of the aristocratic gallant - minor nobles and members of the upper-class with passionate libertine mentalities whom can perhaps best be described by their "fierce individualism, contemptuous of hypocrisy and social conformity in the pursuit of wealth and riches." - according to the author, the famous Italian painter Caravaggio was affiliated with a certain Roman gang of gallants (which were also known as bloods, bravos, bucks, and blades), whose mantra was "Nec spe, nec metu" (without hope or fear).

Chapter 9, Masters by Night: Plebians explores night's social implications in regard to the lower economic orders and delves into the twilight gatherings that occurred during the pre-industrial era which more often than not seemed to end in lootings, arson, and other criminal activity. The author stresses the factors at play in the various regions such as colonial America and England, but also discusses uprisings and nocturnal revelry in a diverse group of locations. Chapter 10, Ordinances of the Bedchamber: Rituals delineates sleep preparation rituals during the pre-industrial period and also covers the evolution of the bed between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries while addressing variations in sleeping arrangements for the different socioeconomic groups and emphasizing concepts such as the bed as a separate "room", communal sleep, and what made the ideal bedfellow. Ekirch focuses on the role of servants in the bedroom, prayers and medicinal remedies as soporifics, and on the bed both as a symbol of wealth and as a haven for comfort.

The final chapter is entitled, Sleep We Have Lost: Rhythms and Revelations, and one of its major discussions revolves around the first and second sleep intervals that pre-industrial sleepers experienced during their normal rest cycles, a unique phenomenon which involved an initial period called first sleep that usually lasted around four hours, and was followed sometime after midnight with a roughly one-hour period of wakefulness when the individual attended to prayers or housework, after which they returned to bed for what was known as second sleep, to finally awaken at dawn and begin their day.

My final impressions for A. Roger Ekirch's At Day's Close: Night in Times Past were immensely positive. The book's convenient anecdotal format renders the process of reading it perfect for those who are always on the go, and the illustrations most certainly add to the experience and provide a unique and appealing visual theme. There is plenty of history to be found here, and after reading about our ancestors' nighttime trials and tribulations throughout the centuries I for one am extremely thankful for all of the technological advances that have been made to contribute to our current quality of life. I think that medieval and Renaissance history enthusiasts will find a great deal to appreciate with regard to Ekirch's research, as he includes a fair amount of information from eras not necessarily falling within the 1500-1750 time period, and in my own humble opinion that aspect added some much-welcome, extra variety to the volume. The bibliography features a robust collection of studies for perusal, but judging by their titles, two of the more interesting were George Holoch's 2002 English translation of Jean Verdon's Night in the Middle Ages, and Norman John Greville Pounds' 1989 Hearth & Home: A History of Material Culture. Thank you so very much for reading, I hope that you enjoyed the review!

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of writing a history of night is brilliant. Considering that half of any human life is spent in the dark, it's amazing that nobody thought to write this book before. Ekirch's treatment of the subject is thorough, but sometimes rambling. He points out that until fairly recent times it was dangerous to be out at night. Or safe to be in at night. It's kind of frightening, actually. Little deterred desperate robbers from breaking in on sleeping people. Those who ventured out only increased the odds of being robbed. For someone who has always maintained that people are basically good, night proves a strong challenge.

It's not all gloom and doom, of course. The book discusses the development of artificial light and the way that it changed night forever. Not only that, but it had theological implications as well (something I discuss on my blog: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World). God created darkness, so it was good. Or God created light so darkness was bad. Depends on how you choose to look at it.

The book isn't laid out chronologically, which is disorienting for me when it comes to histories. It also leads to repetition. Some of us only require minimal reminding that night is dangerous. By the end, however, we've tamed the dark so much that it's now threatened. As with much of life, balance is the important thing.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tour through what night and darkness meant in Early Modern times, and a book that delves into contemporary letters and diaries and guidebooks to reconstruct a time when things did go bump in the night and when neighbourhoods and homes and walled towns saw themselves as little beleaguered islands every night. Ekirch is working in the tradition of the Annales microhistories of the 1970s and 1980s, and, like his French forebears, has a keen eye for local colour and half-forgotten sources. "At Day's Close" walks us through the dangers and expenses of candles and rushlights and torches, through the (well-founded) fear of housebreakers and robbers, through the ways in which the Church and local governments characterised night and the suspect people who were abroad in the Land of Nyx. Well-written, though the text can drag, and sometimes the accumulation of detail is just tedious. All in all, though, a pleasant and sometimes fascinating look at the world before gas and electric lamps, a world where European populations knew that half of every day was spent in a strange and unregulated and terrifying darkness.

[Bett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an interesting topic, this book has. Full of information that one might never have thought of about life in the pre-industrial (or, ‘early modern,’ as the author often says) western world. It took me rather longer to finish than I expected, which I will blame on my shortened attention span after a steady diet of cozy mysteries recently. But I really enjoyed the sensation of existing for a while in that early modern world, where people locked and bolted themselves into their homes after dark for fear of spirits, criminals, and ‘dank night air.’ Such a contrast with our bright, blinking, twittering, 24/7 life.

[Kenghis Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most fascinating, and weird, books I've read in awhile. So much you didn't know about our human past, what we lost with the invention of the light bulb... Crazy.

[Meaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a real gem -- it was excellently written, entertaining, original and well-researched. I discovered many intriguing facts I’d never run across before, and it left me with a lot to think about.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admittedly, many would find this book tedious. One must have a motive other entertainment to read it from beginning to end. I read this book in hopes it would do a bit to satisfy my life-long curiosity about the lives of the common people, my forbears, in Europe before immigration. I did learn some interesting facts, not about my particular family, of course, but the class of peasants they most likely belonged to.
I believe my German relatives who had probably been serfs, then farmers or farm laborers, worked hard in the daylight. They brought their animals into their home at night (for protection and warmth), then went to bed in their clothes (for an earlier morning start or because they had no night clothes) and slept five or more to a bed. I make this connection because they emigrated as a family, homesteaded a farm in the Midwest which remained in the family for more than 100 years. These facts would indicate a familiarity with the skills required for farming.
My Scots-Irish relative left Europe much earlier and seemed to move from country to city and back again. Perhaps he had some education and worked in jobs that required reading and math. One thing I learned from this book was that some people spent their precious candles reading at night, occasionally even starting house fires. Given what I know of his descendants, I would number my Scotch forebears among these people.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading this book off and on for a few years, really! I found it fascinating in the research done and in the tales A. Roger Ekirch told in his book. It took him years to write it, too! The Preface begins with "Let the night teach us what we are, and the day what we should be." and so we learn how night used to be, as in most of life, those with little did the night work, out of sight of those with much, and in power. But everyone had their frightful experiences because of the dark! Toward the end, the gas lamps came to towns along with the beginnings of organized police, and the changes in sleep habits created new biological rhythms in people. He mentions the dimming of the night sky. One must now travel to far outposts, for example, to view the glory of the Milky Way and other previously special constellations. Ekirch ends with a lament of our 24/7 cities: "With darkness diminished, opportunties for privacy, intimacy, and self-reflection will grow more scarce." I enjoyed it thoroughly.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and lyric; Ekirch goes spelunking into the caverns of night in history, and reveals gem after gem along the way. Meticulously researched. And full of surprises. Before light pollution, stars often shone so bright they cast shadow! Ekirch also laments the extinction of first and second sleeps; in antiquity up until the modern era, most people slept in two shifts - when the sun went down, and then woke up later to pray, ponder, visit with one another, and all other sorts of pursuits. As part of this, the dreams of the first sleep were wondered at, allowing dreamers to delve deeper into their psyche and soul than modern humanity. He ends with a warning about experiments to do away with night altogether, a scary thought, although light pollution has already almost done that. A very dense book - you have to be in this for the long haul. But it’s worth it.

[Anna Lorentzon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must agree with previous reviewers that it is full of i teresting facts, sorted into themes. And it reads like notes, not a book. That is the reason it took me a long time to get through it. But, it was very interesting and fits into my interest in human values and perception, how it can and has changed. The big news for me was that sleeping split in two session with a social or meditative hpur or two in the middle of the night.
Thinking of it, when I worked long days and had a small child, that was the only way we had energy gor marital relations, so I may try to revive that old custom.

[K.V. Martins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meticulously researched! How did we spend our time at night in pre-Industrial times? When there were fears of witches and ghosts roaming the darkness? What was 'first sleep' and why don't we do it now? So many fascinating tidbits of history. I read this book when it first came out and second read didn't disappoint. Highly recommended.

[Jennifer Mangler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I chose to read this book because I'd listened to an interview with the author discussing broken sleep and was intrigued. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear in the book until the very last chapter. I am still intrigued by that concept. The rest of the book was mildly interesting (there really are some fascinating bits interspersed throughout) but incredibly repetitive.

[Katy Foley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was both dry and extremely fascinating. I will never again take for granted artificial light or the darkness that artificial light has robbed us of. This book also illuminated the role night played in societies and in crime.