A world without fossil fuels can develop along a familiar path, more or less, until charcoal becomes inadequate for the amount of metal smelting, ceramic firing, and so on that's needed. In our history, that gap was filled by
coke, and the need for coal to be mined to make coke grew vastly as the industrial revolution got going.
With no coal, having our kind of industrial revolution is impractical. Jumping to nuclear power is too much of a stretch, IMHO. Something that could be built is a
solar furnace, with a large number of mirrors, each pointed by hand. "Sun-miners" have different occupational diseases from coal-miners, but the job is likewise dull and difficult.