Histories of Everyday Life

It is a fascinating and convincing analysis based on meticulous research-evidenced by the large bibliography and extensive footnoting. It is likely to remain a key text for those whose interests lie in education, museums, local history, local government and even for those of us who recall with nostalgia some of their own experiences. * Tim Lomas, Family & Community History *
In Histories of Everyday Life, Laura Carter offers a fresh and compelling take on the origins and popularization of social history in Britain in the decades after the First World War. * Jon Lawrence, Twentieth Century British History *
The book will interest not just the education specialist, but really anyone who is keen to review the much explored ground of 20th British society from an original, new vantage point. * Clémence Fourton, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique *
For compelling reasons that Carter carefully unplaits and then rebraids, ordinary children and their ordinary parents were offered resources like books, radio broadcasts, museum exhibits, and school curricula that focused on the way people like them had lived in earlier centuries. Using a fresh approach to both materials and methodologies, she teases out scarce evidence to demonstrate that exposure to these resources profoundly affected people's experience and consciousness. * Leslie Howsam, Journal of British Studies *
Carter's text offers a valuable lens through which to consider educational and social change in twentieth century Britain; she demonstrates the importance of understanding these processes of change in conjunction with each other. Her work contributes to a growing reconsideration of the British education system as being shaped by factors beyond political actions and by people beyond political actors, an approach that nuances our understanding of both British educational history and British social history. * Florence Smith, HISTORY: Reviews of New Books *
Employing an illuminating periodisation and a distinctive, deftly gendered, notion of conservative modernity, Carter has drawn upon a wide range of sources and used 22 illustrations, an index and data on the interviewees to connect publishing, pedagogic, municipal and curatorial developments and provide a multi layered analysis of shifts in British culture. * Daniel Weinbren, Family & Community History *
This meticulously researched monograph interweaves oral histories with a wealth of primary materials, including cigarette cards, children's essays, and photographs. Its contents will interest a wide range of historians, and its challenge to conventional narratives of social history will prove as stimulating to established scholars as to undergraduates exploring the subject for the first time. * Max Long, Cultural and Social History *
For historians of a certain generation, E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class created a new social history that illuminated the neglected lives of ordinary people. * D. L. LeMahieu, American Historical Review *
In less than 300 pages, Carter leads the reader masterfully through the many settings in which the history of everyday life unfolded in the first decades of the 20th century * Thomas J. Sojka, Los Angeles Review of Books *
Employing an illuminating periodisation and a distinctive, deftly gendered, notion of conservative modernity, Carter has drawn upon a wide range of sources and used 22 illustrations, an index and data on the interviewees to connect publishing, pedagogic, municipal and curatorial developments and provide a multi-layered analysis of shifts in British culture. * Daniel Weinbren, Family & Community History *
Revealing and fascinating about many facets of twentieth century British culture. * Pat Thane, Cercles *
This meticulously researched monograph interweaves oral histories with a wealth of primary materials, including cigarette cards, children's essays, and photographs. Its contents will interest a wide range of historians, and its challenge to conventional narratives of social history will prove as stimulating to established scholars as to undergraduates exploring the subject for the first time. * Max Long, Culture and Social History *