Preface
This is the first attempt to write the history of smoking in this
country from the social point of view. There have been many books
written about tobacco--F.W. Fairholt's History of Tobacco, 1859, and
the Tobacco (1857) of Andrew Steinmetz, are still valuable
authorities--but hitherto no one has told the story of the
fluctuations of fashion in respect of the practice of smoking.
Much that is fully and well treated in such a work as Fairholt's
History is ignored in the following pages. I have tried to confine
myself strictly to the changes in the attitude of society towards
smoking, and to such historical and social sidelights as serve to
illuminate that theme.
The tobacco-pipe was popular among every section of society in this
country in an amazingly short space of time after smoking was first
practised for pleasure, and retained its ascendancy for no
inconsiderable period. Signs of decline are to be observed during the
latter part of the seventeenth century; and in the course of its
successor smoking fell more and more under the ban of fashion. Early
in the nineteenth century tobacco-smoking had reached its nadir from
the social point of view. Then came the introduction of the cigar and
the revival of smoking in the circles from which it had long been
almost entirely absent. The practice was hedged about and obstructed
by a host of restrictions and conventions, but as the nineteenth
century advanced the triumphant progress of tobacco became more and
more marked. The introduction of the cigarette completed what the
cigar had begun; barriers and prejudices crumbled and disappeared with
increasing rapidity; until at the present day tobacco-smoking in
England--by pipe or cigar or cigarette--is more general, more
continuous, and more free from conventional restrictions than at any
period since the early days of its triumph in the first decades of the
seventeenth century.
The tracing and recording of this social history of the smoking-habit,
touching as it does so many interesting points and details of domestic
manners and customs, has been a task of peculiar pleasure. To me it
has been a labour of love; but no one can be more conscious of the
many imperfections of these pages than I am.
I should like to add that I am indebted to Mr. Vernon Rendall, editor
of _The Athenaeum_, for a number of valuable references and
suggestions.
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The First Pipes Of Tobacco Smoked In England
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