In his book At Day's Close, A. Roger Ekirch explores how the meaning of night, the forgotten half of history, changed before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Fewer topics have elicited less attention from historians than “night in times past,” a subject that Ekirch believes has been unjustly neglected. This neglect is a manifestation of the long-held assumption that nothing happened at night, the time of day in which good people were fast asleep and which offered what the Stuart poet Thomas Middleton described as “no occupation but sleep, feed, and fart” (xxv). The product of two decades' work of archival research, this inventive social and cultural history suggests that darkness in earlier eras fostered a distinct culture with many of its own routines and rituals. However, with the intrusion of the modern world, Ekirch laments, the significance of this distinct and multifaceted cultural universe has been lost.

In the preindustrial age, daytime and nighttime were separate worlds. In chapter 1, “Terrors of the Night,” Ekirch investigates the association of darkness with fear, fire, and Satan, maintaining that in the early modern world, night “summoned the worst elements in man, nature, and the cosmos” (3–4). Early modern people saw night as invested with supernatural meaning, a satanic realm where demons, fairies, and witches plied their craft against the Godly community of man (17–18). Nighttime misadventures were often blamed on fairies, Ekirch wryly notes, but were more often the result of poorly lit streets, pervasive drunkenness, and unprovoked violence. Endemic poverty and social dislocation made crime a major nighttime concern in the early modern world, as murderers, bullies, and thieves exploited the cover of darkness. For the early modern family, the home provided a refuge against the dangers of a hostile world. The English called nightfall “shutting-in,” which literally meant the shutting-in of daylight but came to mean “the need for households to bolt portals against the advancing darkness” (91). Families relied upon their own resources for protection at night, including locks, dogs, and weapons, and were far from defenseless. Preindustrial families used candles, oil lamps, coals, candlewood, and rushes to expel night from the home, creating for themselves “small patches of light amid the blackness” (101).

“Night,” Jean Carbonnier mused, “probably gave birth to the rule of law” (84). Night was a source of fear and trepidation for the established order, and “nightwalkers,” those awake and active after nightfall, were viewed with suspicion (60). Although sentries, lookouts, and watchmen appeared as early as the late Middle Ages, night “escaped legal oversight” (84). Echoing J. A. Sharpe's work on the problem of public order in early modern England, Ekirch suggests that efforts by authorities to impose order on nocturnal lawlessness proved ineffectual at best. Although the Falstaffian figure of the lightly armed night watchmen signified a desire to protect the community; authorities largely abdicated their civic responsibilities (84–85). Because of the limitations of law enforcement, early modern authorities were forced to rely upon repressive penalties to deter the lawless from crimes of the night, and courts often meted out harsher punishments for nighttime infractions (86).

Night had such a bad reputation because it seemingly undermined the social order that prevailed during the day. “Night revolutionized the social landscape,” Ekirch maintains, making “members of the mighty more plebeian” and the “legions of the weak more powerful” (227). It was commonly believed that nighttime encouraged crime among the lower orders, including pilferage, rape, burglary, grave robbing, poaching, and smuggling. Although the nighttime exploits of elite gangs of young blades distinguished them from much-scorned social inferiors, Ekirch argues that it was the lower orders that controlled the nocturnal landscape. Darkness “loosened the tethers of the visible world” and held out the promise of personal sovereignty to the poor and disaffected, nonconformist Protestant groups, the disabled, and homosexuals (228). Night was a “common benefactress” that provided social license for both patricians and plebeians alike (209).

In perhaps his most perceptive chapter, Ekirch tackles the “genuine mystery of seamless sleep that we experience today” (301). Ekirch suggests that the practice of segmented sleep characterized natural patterns of sleep before the modern age and that the custom of reserving nighttime for rest was a relatively recent development, evolving gradually among prehistoric peoples. People often slept for a few hours after dinner (first sleep), awakening about midnight to complete chores or engage in prayer, conversation, or sex for two to three hours, and then resumed sleeping until daybreak. Thus, the aberration, Ekirch argues, is not the segmented patterns of sleep common in the preindustrial world but, rather, the modern practice of reserving night solely for sleep.

What began as a history of nighttime becomes by the end a lament for a night we have lost. The origins of what Ekirch terms a “nocturnal revolution” owed much to the spread of scientific rationalism, technological innovation, and the rejection of the “preindustrial worldview” (324–25). The European cityscape changed dramatically during the course of the eighteenth century. The rise of consumerism made nighttime more profitable, as well-lit shops remained open at night to meet a growing demand for goods and mills ran around the clock to maximize production and profits (326–27). Theaters, pleasure gardens, assemblies, and parties provided a growing variety of nighttime leisure activities for affluent urban elites. The rise of such activities led to middle-class complaints of nighttime lawlessness, as thieves and prostitutes emerged from the night into newly lit streets. For a burgeoning middle class, artificial lighting symbolized an emerging age of progress and order. Public illumination had “enormous potential as a weapon of social control,” as professional police authorities sought to expel riffraff from public spaces (330). Police patrols and public lights transformed the ageless rhythms of life “by blurring the boundaries between day and night” (330–31). At day's close, this was the beginning of the modern world, a world in which night is diminished and “opportunities for privacy, intimacy, and self-reflection … grow more scarce” (332–33). The abolition of night, Ekirch concludes, has blighted our dreams and deprived us of a better understanding of our selves.