Describe life in the USA... in 1900

April 7, 2014 9:09 AM

So I'm working on a book. I don't want to give too much away, but the fictional tale will be set right around the turn of the century. Help me understand life in the US - in 1900.

What did they wear?
What did they eat?
How did they think?
And a thousand others...

At least a few of the main characters will be of the affluent type - the sort that would have made good use of the libraries of the time.

The story will be about future knowledge - imagine reading a book written a century from now. What would you *do* with that knowledge? What does an educated person (or uneducated person) from 1900 do with that knowledge?

posted by chrisinseoul to Education (18 answers total)

With all due respect, Ask Metafilter isn't google or the library. Do some thorough research yourself before coming here with some much more specific questions for which you could not find answers even after your search.
posted by amro at 9:26 AM on April 7, 2014 [17 favorites]

This is British and not American, but a good place to start would be checking out the reality series The 1900 House.

Despite being British, this will answer a lot of your "what did people wear/eat/read" type questions for the USA, assuming we're talking about affluent urbanites.

Outside of that, knowing where in the USA your story is set will change the answers to these questions a lot. Life was very different in Oklahoma in 1900 than it was in Chicago or Mississippi or the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the same year.

Authors worth checking out:

Upton Sinclair
Mark Twain
Henry James
Edith Wharton
Theodore Dreiser

On the off chance you're talking about socially prominent East Coast types, Henry James' Washington Square and Edith Wharton's The House Of Mirth are worth looking closely at.
posted by Sara C. at 9:27 AM on April 7, 2014 [3 favorites]

This is from a comment I made in this thread which had a great deal of photos from 1870s London, but could be useful to you.

Here is an image of a branch of my family, taken in northern West Virginia/SE Ohio around 1903. The dapper fellow with the banjo is one of my great-grandparents. The old guy sitting to the left of him was 102 at the time - he was too old to fight in the Civil War, ferchrissakes. (This was taken at their old homestead dating back to the early 1800s; most of them lived in the city by then, but it makes the picture looks like it was taken 40 years earlier than it was. The crack in the photo plate happened on its way back down the mountain on horseback.)

1900 in that part of the US had people with large extended families transitioning from strictly rural life to city life on a seasonal basis. Some of the family remained on the farm in the winter to take care of the livestock and the homestead. The rest of the family would then move into a nearby town or city to work for the winter where there was more job opportunities and even school for some, and then when planting season arrived they would all go back to the farm to work.
posted by chambers at 9:27 AM on April 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

One thing I'd recommend is reading books about advertizing in the era.

This one was in our house when I was a kid, They Laughed When I Sat Down..

A copy of the 1897 Sears Roebuck catalog could be incredibly interesting.

Read books from the era. Lots are free on Kindle.

For SURE read, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, written in 1906. Also written in 1906 is an article called Death's Laboratory, in Colliers Magazine.

Here's the Pittsburgh/Allegheny County Coroner Case Files, which describe deaths in that era.

1900 House could be interesting, if it weren't for all the whining. Frontier House, if you want a more rural viewpoint (again with the whining!)

Tour homes that were built in that era. I HIGHLY recommend the Frick House in Point Breeze Pittsburgh.

Honestly though, while it's an interesting idea, if you even have to ask, you don't know enough about it to do it justice, not to say it wouldn't be worth it to research. I love this era and I've been reading all about it ever since I was a kid. Nothing facinates me as much.

You also have to overcome some pretty hateful prejudices.

An interesting book about someone re-living their life is Replay.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 9:29 AM on April 7, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah, it would really help to know what part of the U.S. this story is set in.

It's probably not your focus, but you might do some research on the history of the Carnegie libraries.
posted by spudsilo at 9:33 AM on April 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

I agree with Ruthless Bunny. I had a copy of an 1897 Sears catalogue and pored over if from the age of 10 or so. Read some Booth Tarkington novels just for fun.
posted by antiquated at 9:34 AM on April 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

Other literary stuff from the Anglophone world around that time you might want to check out:

Anne of Green Gables (and the other books in the series -- I think the last one takes place during WWI?)

Any Rudyard Kipling novel, though keep in mind life at the turn of the century in colonial India is unlikely to bear a strong resemblance to life in rural Minnesota at the same time.

The works of Jack London.

The works of Oscar Wilde.

My Antonia
My Brilliant Career
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
posted by Sara C. at 9:35 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Given the premise of your book, you should read Looking Backward. It's free on gutenberg.
posted by rtha at 9:45 AM on April 7, 2014

You might find some of the /r/askhistorians FAQs re US history to be of interest, or start your own thread.
posted by melissasaurus at 9:52 AM on April 7, 2014

For a quick-and-dirty look consider something like Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the 1800's. I haven't read it, but there might be some useful information about the later part of the 1800s.

But you're probably best off reading what people were writing in that era. It will give you an ear for the language and help you soak up the little details that will make your own writing better. And there's no shortage of good quality writing from that period. It's hard to beat primary sources.
posted by lharmon at 10:02 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Argh, had a lot of stuff typed up and then lost it all. Trying to recreate:

This is a little embarrassing, but I have a guilty love of Antique Literature for Young People, particularly from the Victorian (especially Antebellum) and Edwardian eras.

Let's see, one of my favorite series is Annie Fellows Johnston's Little Colonel series, which was published and is set (mostly) in various parts of America (especially a southern plantation in Kentucky, and also Texas and Arizona--all of these places and the others encountered are very different, as things were when travel and mass media were much more difficult) during Edwardian times. The characters are mostly affluent (or slightly less so, but still white and with upper class ideals), and their surroundings, personal characters, adventures, and hopes are amply described. You do have to deal with the normal racism, sexism, and cultural attitudes of the times, but that's what makes it such interesting immersive reading. What is not stated outright is as interesting as what is actually said. Also, there are illustrations.

I hope you've already done some simple Google research of Victorian and Edwardian times before asking. Also, in the book, try to avoid glaringly anachronistic language in dialogue? I was reading a cheap Regency romance the other day and encountered the sentence "[name] was old school," which was...jarring.

As for what you asked about foreknowledge of the future, I expect most people would try to use it to their own advantage (monetary or otherwise). I expect some of them would try to prevent events they see as tragic. I expect that, Cassandra-style, they would have a hard time with it.
posted by spelunkingplato at 10:21 AM on April 7, 2014 [3 favorites]

The Betsy Tacy books are mostly set in MN. Their friend Carney attends Vassar.The woman who was the model for Emily of Deep Valley was an IRL friend of Maud Hart Lovelace, but is not seen as part of the Crowd in the BT high school books.

Pollyanna is set in VT.

L Frank Baum wrote the non fantasy Aunt Jane's nieces under the name Edith Van Dyne.
posted by brujita at 10:59 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't describe it as fun, but I would say Booth Tarkington is probably your best bet for this. His novels are highly concerned with (and nostalgic for) this period, and most of his characters are middle- to upper-class Midwesterners. Sinclair Lewis' Main Street is probably not a bad idea either. Henry James and Edith Wharton are both much better writers, but their works are concerned with the wealthy and well-travelled, for the most part.
posted by Diablevert at 11:51 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Main Street is good, Babbitt is iconic, although not much read anymore. It's 1922, so a bit later than your era, but MAN! It's so good!
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:47 PM on April 7, 2014

> It's 1922, so a bit later than your era,

It's ridiculously later than the era in question, so much so that it's irrelevant. Other books published in 1922: Ulysses, Jacob's Room, The Beautiful and Damned, Tales of the Jazz Age, Siddhartha. None of them is in the least relevant to the world of 1900. The world of 1900 was utterly different from the world of the 1920s. Let's try not to respond to an already absurdly vague question with wildly off-topic answers.

Books actually published in 1900 include The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Lord Jim, and Sister Carrie. In general, immerse yourself as much in the media of the time as possible and try to forget about everything that came after; do not do heavy foreshadowing of World War I. Just in case you were tempted.
posted by languagehat at 3:06 PM on April 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

A tree grows in Brooklyn.
posted by brujita at 4:15 PM on April 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

You can read old newspapers at Chronicling America at the Library of Congress. They have newspapers from all over the United States, including big cities and smaller towns, from Vermont to California.
posted by kristi at 9:38 AM on April 9, 2014

Side note: "old school" is perfectly appropriate for the nineteenth century. In my personal reading, I've come across it more often as, say, "a gentleman of the old school" rather than "an old-school gentleman," but the adjectival form apparently dates to 1749 (although I'd like to see that source).

See also "tricked out," the Tiffany problem, and many more. One more reason primary sources are the best.
posted by booksandlibretti at 2:28 PM on April 10, 2014