A history of private life
by Philippe Ariès, Georges Duby · first published 1987
11mentions
5recommended by
9HN commenters
2016–2026first – last mentioned
56% recommend44% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Multi-volume survey of private life across eras, with volumes 2 and 3 covering the medieval and Renaissance periods. It serves as a broad starting point for everyday domestic history.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…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…
on “A very long way from home: early Byzantine finds at the far ends of the world” ↗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.
on “The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games” ↗…(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.
on “I am not a self-made man” ↗…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
on “Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2019?” ↗You might like the book: At Home: A Short History of Private Life, it talks about just this idea.
on “I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit” ↗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…
on “High Density Living, 2000 Years Ago: Inside the Roman Apartment Building” ↗…modern historians try to minimize how much really was lost in late antiquity and the "Viking Age" after Charlemagne. The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization discusses the first of these periods; A History of Private Life has some interesting discussion of the second, and there was a memorable discussion of the Viking Age in the Archdruid Report blog not long ago. The Archdruid Report's author put it this way, more or…
on “What Sid Meier’s Video Game Empire Got Right and Wrong About ‘Civilization’” ↗…that wasn't half chalk still might have a fish in it (see famous Thoreau quote on evidence.) This also famously happened with bread. You can read about it for example in Bill Bryson's "At Home: A Short History of Private Life" https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/712524-because-bread-was-so... “Because bread was so important, the laws governing its purity were strict and the punishment severe. A baker who cheated his customers…
on “Demon-Haunted World” ↗…grind for. Ground breaking research and great education isn't something that comes from working 80 hours a week (most of the time). I once read a theory, I think it was in the book "At Home: A Short History of Private Life" by Bill Bryson, based on an observation (the accuracy of which I can't confirm or deny, some of the things in the book stretched credulity) that a surprising number of inventions in England were made…
on “MIT graduate students vote to unionize” ↗…excellent. For some reason I decided to read all 7 Harry Potters in French. If you're learning French, it's a great idea, the French gets progressively harder so you can keep up! Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life has been my companion for some weeks, but it's quite long. I'm happy with all my reading this year, some 32 books, many in a foreign language. Given I've no time to read during the day, and can only…
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗…Nelogram's creators likely drew inspiration from the Athenian Agora, the ancient Greek marketplace that served not only as a commercial center but also a vital space for public discourse. In his book "A History of Private Life," Peter Stearns describes the Agora as "a place for the exchange of news, gossip, and political ideas." Similarly, Nelogram aims to be a digital Agora for Africans, a platform for open exchange and unfiltered…