Audiobook Complete: Manners, Customs and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period
Title: Manners, Customs and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period
Author: Paul Lacroix (1806-1884)
Source: Librivox
URL: http://librivox.org/manners-customs-and-dress-during-the-middle-ages-and-during-the-renaissance-period-by-paul-lacroix/
This is an entertaining and enjoyable book, as long as you don’t take it too seriously as an authoritative resource. In the areas where I have detailed knowledge, there isn’t much that I can point at and say definitively the author is wrong, but there is a lot that isn’t exactly right either. The primary problem is that the author provides an anecdote about a topic or behavior at a certain time and place, then extends that by implication further than he should. That makes this work less useful as a resource, but it is still interesting and enjoyable, and he does mention references for many anecdotes that could be further researched if one were interested.
The book is read by several different readers. Most are quite good, a few are not up to the quality of the others, but are still understandable. There is an e-text version available from Project Gutenberg (follow the link above) that includes the original woodcuts.
I enjoyed this book, and may listen to select chapters again, as a starting point to get a little context before starting serious research.