Destiny Obscure

<p>In this companion volume to <em>Useful Toil</em> John Burnett has drawn extensively on over eight hundred previously unpublished manuscripts. The result is a unique record of childhood that reveals in intimate detail the trials and hard-won triumphs of nineteenth-century working-class life. Besides affording rare insights into the developing child's world of dreams hopes and fears they reflect a crucial period in the evolution of a family tradition; a time when to counteract the brutalizing pressures of urbanization and industrialization ordinary people turned to each other for support.<br> Children have seldom had a voice in history: these writers and their experiences take their place as part of the essential fabric of our past.</p>