Q&A Historical queries answered
You find very occasional uses of expressions like “the twenties of this century” (ie 1820s) in mid-Victorian newspapers, and certainly by the late 19th century, people would talk about previous decades in the way we do, albeit not as much. In the 1880s, Mark Twain titled an essay Three Statements of the Eighties, but there are relatively few other literary uses.
The usage only emerged in an industrial age more attuned to the calendar than previous generations. In earlier times, people might talk of the ‘year of our Lord’ suchand-such, but they also organised their personal and community chronologies in terms of seasons, feast days and royal reigns.
You also have to ask what we mean when we refer to particular decades. The chances are that the images they conjure up in the mind are mostly cultural. So ‘the twenties’ evokes flappers, silent films, the Charleston; ‘the sixties’ makes us think of the Beatles, hippies and Twiggy; while ‘the eighties’ conjures images of big hair, shoulder-pads and yuppies… and so on.
You might be referring to politics, technological or economic trends, or to wars, but the images these shorthand decade references evoke in most people’s minds are of entertainment, fashion and nostalgia. It’s the product of a pervasive visual culture that did not exist before the 20th century. The cultural identities of decades in previous centuries were not nearly so distinctive.
Eugene Byrne, author and journalist specialising in history