The Social History of Smoking

Transcriber's Note:
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This is the first attempt to write the history of smoking in this country from the social point of view. There have been many books written about tobacco—F.W. Fairholt's History of Tobacco, 1859, and the Tobacco (1857) of Andrew Steinmetz, are still valuable authorities—but hitherto no one has told the story of the fluctuations of fashion in respect of the practice of smoking.
Much that is fully and well treated in such a work as Fairholt's History is ignored in the following pages. I have tried to confine myself strictly to the changes in the attitude of society towards smoking, and to such historical and social sidelights as serve to illuminate that theme.