Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914
"The Social History of Smoking" by George Latimer Apperson, can be purchased at Amazon.com in two different versions. Depending on the quality of the edition, prices range between $35 and $104.
From Chapter 1: There is little doubt that the smoke of herbs and leaves of various kinds was inhaled in this country, and in Europe generally, long before tobacco was ever heard of on this side the Atlantic. But whatever smoking of this kind took place was medicinal and not social. Many instances have been recorded of the finding of pipes resembling those used for tobacco- smoking in Elizabethan times, in positions and in circumstances which would seem to point to much greater antiquity of use than the form of the pipes supports; but some at least of these finds will not bear the interpretation which has been put upon them, and in other cases the presence of pipes could reasonably be accounted for otherwise than by associating them with the antiquity claimed for them. In any case, the entire absence of any allusions whatever to smoking in any shape or form in our pre-Elizabethan literature, or in mediæval or earlier art, is sufficient proof that from the social point of view smoking did not then exist. The inhaling of the smoke of dried herbs for medicinal purposes, whether through a pipe-shaped funnel or otherwise, had nothing in it akin to the smoking of tobacco for both individual and social pleasure, and therefore lies outside the scope of this book.
From Chapter 7: Fielding himself smoked his pipe. When his play "The Wedding Day" was produced by Garrick in 1743, various suggestions were made to the author as to the excision of certain passages, and the modification of one of the scenes. Garrick pressed for certain omissions, but—"No, damn them," said Fielding, "if the scene is not a good one, let them find that out"; and then, according to Murphy, he retired to the green-room, where, during the progress of the play, he smoked his pipe and drank champagne. Presently he heard the sound of hissing, and when Garrick came in and explained that the audience had hissed the scene he had wished to have modified, all Fielding said was: "Oh, damn them, they have found it out, have they!" Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, the crafty old Jacobite who took part in the rising of 1745 and who was executed on Tower Hill in 1747, was a smoker. The pipe which he was reported to have smoked on the evening before his execution, together with his snuff-box and a canvas tobacco-bag, were for many years in the possession of the Society of Cogers, the famous debating society of Fleet Street.
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