Time, Desire and Horror

In this book Alain Corbin argues that the 1860s were a crucial period for western civilization, characterized by radical changes in the way Europeans viewed themselves and their world. Corbin examines urban development, the new mobility of the population, prostitution and policing, personal hygiene and the social plagues of alcoholism, tuberculosis and venereal disease.

Publisher's Note. Preface to the English Edition. 1. The Daily Arithmetic of the Nineteenth Century. 2. The Great Century of Linen. 3. Agitation in Provincial Theatres under the Restoration. 4. The Archaeology of the Housewife and Bourgeois Fantasies. 5. The 'Sex in Mourning' and the History of Nineteenth-Century Women. 6. The Doomed Education of the Nineteenth-Century Prostitute. 7. Nineteenth-Century Prostitutes and the 'Vast Effort for Nothing'. 8. Hereditary Syphilis or the Impossible Redemption. A Contribution to the History of Morbid Heredity. 9. The Little Bible for Young Marrieds. 10. Public Opinion, Policy and Industrial Pollution in the Pre-Haussmann Town. 11. The Peasants of Paris: A History of Limousin Building Workers in the Nineteenth Century. 12. The Blood of Paris: Reflections on the Genealogy of the Image of the Capital. 13. A History and Anthropology of the Senses. Index.