Colonial Living by Edwin Tunis
"Colonial Living" by Edwin Tunis offers a detailed exploration of everyday life in colonial America, focusing on the common experiences of its inhabitants. The book is structured chronologically and geographically, beginning with the early settlements of St. Augustine, Roanoke, and Jamestown, and progressing through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It delves into various aspects of colonial existence, including food, clothing, crafts, housing, education, and the technological tools that shaped daily life. Tunis enriches the text with over two hundred pen-and-ink illustrations that complement and enhance the narrative, providing visual context to the descriptions.
Tunis emphasizes the distinct cultural and geographic elements of different colonial regions, such as New England, New Netherland, and the Southern colonies. He highlights unique practices and technologies, showcasing the ingenuity of colonial citizens. The book also touches on social customs and the practical adaptations of the time, offering insights into how diverse groups navigated their environments. While it is recognized for its thorough research and engaging illustrations, "Colonial Living" may present challenges for younger readers due to its complex prose and lack of standard reference aids. Overall, it serves as a valuable resource for those interested in the intricacies of colonial life in America.
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Subject Terms
Colonial Living by Edwin Tunis
First published: 1957; illustrated
Subjects: Arts, education, family, jobs and work, and travel
Type of work: History
Time of work: 1564-1770
Recommended Ages: 10-18
Form and Content
In Colonial Living, author-illustrator Edwin Tunis describes the “small, common things of Colonial existence” in America: food, cookery, crafts, clothing, furniture, houses, travel, education, and the tools and technology that supported everyday life. The book is divided into three chapters. The first, “Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Beachheads,” describes in a few brief paragraphs the living conditions in each of the earliest settlements at St. Augustine, Roanoke, Jamestown, Plymouth, New Amsterdam, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, and New Sweden. The second chapter, “The Seventeenth Century,” describes aspects of life in that century as settlements multiplied in New England, New Netherland, and the Southern colonies. The third chapter, “The Eighteenth Century,” briefly considers Pennsylvania as a separate entity and then moves on to a lengthy discussion of life in the coastal colonies, essentially the rest of the country. The structure of the book is thus loosely chronological, progressing from the first settlements through the eighteenth century, although it is also geographical insofar as it expands outward from the beachheads with each chronological leap. Tunis’ illustrations are an important part of the book, and every page contains one or more fine black-and-white drawings, more than two hundred of them in total, captioned and closely keyed to the text.
Within the larger chronological and geographic framework, Tunis meanders gracefully from topic to topic. His underlying pattern is movement from the general to the specific as he presents material from the perspective of the average Colonial citizen, particularly in the section on seventeenth century New England, and builds upon that basic information in later sections. For example, he devotes the first four pages in the New England section to house building, beginning with a settler surveying his empty lot and ending with the expansion of the standard one-room or one-story structure into the more elaborate saltbox dwelling. The sections that follow include such topics as houses, cottages, plantations, and inns and note geographic, ethnic, and other differences. In spite of the fact that much of the material in the New England section applies to the seventeenth century in general, there is minimal repetition.
Having covered some of the basics of everyday life, Tunis moves on to consider elements that were distinctive about each period and geographic area. In the New Netherland section, for example, he describes hat making and windmills; under the Southern colonies, he discusses the raising and processing of tobacco; and, when he gets to Pennsylvania, he describes the peculiarities of the Germans and the Scotch-Irish. In the lengthy last section, on the coastal colonies in the eighteenth century, he draws together many threads and presents a more unified picture consistent with the colonies’ expanding populations and improved communications.
Tunis gives careful attention to some of the less well known aspects of early American technology. He has a thorough appreciation for Yankee ingenuity and describes a variety of mechanical devices, from the ladies’ farthingale to an adjustable hanging candleholder, in loving detail. He obviously delights in the interesting and unusual. The inquiring reader may be surprised to learn that an ox was supported by a sling during shoeing because it could not support its tremendous weight on three tiny feet. Readers will surely be amused at Tunis’ explanation of bundling, the custom of allowing engaged couples to lie in bed together while fully clothed, as “nothing more than a practical way to provide warmth and chaperoned privacy for a courting couple under difficult conditions,” claiming that they did “their whispering in full view of parental eyes.”
Critical Context
Colonial Living, Tunis’ fourth book, received the Thomas A. Edison Foundation Award. It was favorably reviewed at the time of publication by The New York Times Book Review, as well as by the standard children’s book review journals such as Booklist and Horn Book. Tunis’ Frontier Living was published as a companion volume to Colonial Living in 1961.
Although still held by many libraries and cited in the sixteenth edition of Children’s Catalog (1991), the core list of books for children from preschool through sixth grade, Colonial Living is not mentioned in major textbooks on children’s literature. This omission is probably attributable to the fact that most of these textbooks are limited to children’s literature at the elementary level. Tunis’ prose may be difficult for the average elementary school reader in an era in which the trend in nonfiction for children is the photo essay.
Another notable trend in children’s nonfiction is the emphasis on careful documentation and provision of reference aids such as a glossary, a list of sources, and an index. Colonial Living includes none of the above. Although the depth of research suggested by the author’s remarks in the preface and acknowledgments is impressive, most teachers and librarians would prefer to see a bibliography of the sources used.
Also important in quality nonfiction are the illustrations. A more recent book on the same topic would be more likely to include a variety of media, particularly photographs or contemporary illustrations, but Tunis’ drawings should not be underestimated. In many cases, a good drawing is far superior to a photograph, and Tunis’ skill with pen and ink, as well as his fascination with the technology of an earlier era, is strongly reminiscent of David Macaulay’s works, such as the Caldecott Honor Book Cathedral (1974).