OLD-TIME CRAFTS AND TRADES edited by...

OLD-TIME CRAFTS AND TRADES edited by Peter Stockham (Dover: $4.95; 137 pp., illustrated). This reprint of a children’s book published in England in 1804 describes common professions of the time: coach-builder, feather-worker, wheelwright, comb-maker. The explanations of how things were made at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution are often revealing: After explaining the tedium of lace-making and the limited income it provides, the author notes that the work is therefore “consigned to the hands of indigent women and young girls.”