The book attempts to see the culture of the nineteenth century in broad terms, integrating everyday ways of life into the story as mental, material and social practices. It also highlights ways of thinking, mentalities and emotions in order to construct a picture of 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 a century of rising factory pipes and grey industrial cities, as a cradle of modern culture, the era has many faces. This book pays special attention to the experiences of contemporaries, from the fear for steaming engines to the longing for the pre-industrial past, from the idle calmness of bourgeois life to the awakening consumerism of the department stores, from curious exoticism to increasing xenophobia, from optimistic visions of future to the expectations of an approaching end. The century that is only a few generations away from us is strange and familiar at the same time a bygone world that has in many ways influenced our present day world.

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

1 Industrialization: Economy and Culture 12

2 The Faustian Man: A Society in Motion 29

3 From the Cult of Genius to Worship of Art 43

4 On the Cultural History of Nationalism 58

5 A Century of Family and Home: Daily Routines and Country Excursions 72

6 Baudelaire in the Department Store: Urban Living and Consumption 88

7 The Breakthrough of Mechanical Reproduction 99

8 Colonial Culture and European Identity 112

9Fin de Siècle: The End of a Century 124

10 Conclusion: Things to Come 140

Notes 148

Bibliography 165

Index 184