Fashioning the Victorians: A Critical Sourcebook
Ebook
Overview
Offering a unique anthology of primary texts, this sourcebook opens a window on the writing that shaped and mirrored Victorian fashion, taking us from corsets to crinolines, dandies to decadent ’New Women’. A user-friendly collection that provides a solid grounding in the fashion history of the nineteenth century, it brings together for the first time sources that trace the evolution of dress and the social, cultural and political discourses that influenced it.
Featuring seminal writings by authors and commentators such as Oscar Wilde, Thorstein Veblen and Sarah Stickney Ellis, plus satirical cartoons, illustrations and fashion plates from key sources such as Punch magazine, it combines primary texts and illustrations with accessible explanatory notes to offer a wide-ranging overview of the period for both students and researchers.
Each section opens with an introduction that examines the major trends in Victorian clothing – and the material, economic, scientific and cultural forces driving those trends – situating the texts in the pressing social anxieties and pleasures of the time. Exploring both menswear and womenswear, and key topics such as corsetry, dress reform and mourning, Mitchell extends her analysis into interdisciplinary fields including gender studies and literature, and guides the reader with a timeline, glossary and further readings.
An essential sourcebook for fashion in the Victorian era, featuring primary source material and accessible introductions to the key social, political and cultural issues of the time that influenced the development of dress for both men and women
Compiles important primary sources that are often difficult to isolate or access, from authors such as Oscar Wilde, Thomas Carlyle and Thorstein Veblen
Complements primary sources with informative introductions that frame the socio-cultural contexts of their publication and reception, placing each reading into an intellectual context
Contains a comprehensive timeline of major touchstones in social, political, scientific, and literary developments, in addition to fashion-related content, plus an annotated bibliography featuring suggestions for further reading
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Timeline
Introduction: Fashioning the Victorians
I. Fashion Theory in the Nineteenth Century
1. Thomas Carlyle, from Sartor Resartus (1836)
2. Sarah Stickney Ellis, from The Women of England (1843)
3. George Darwin, ‘The Development of Dress’ (1872)
4. Thorstein Veblen, “The Economic Theory of Women’s Dress” (1894)
II. Dress Reform
5. Eliza Lynn Linton, “The Girl of the Period” (1868)
6. M. Eliza Haweis, from The Art of Dress (1879)
7. Florence Pomeroy, Lady Harberton, “Rational Dress Reform” (1882)
8. Oscar Wilde, “The Philosophy of Dress” (1897)
III. Crinolines and Corsets
9. “Crinoline” (1863)
10. Harriet Martineau, ‘A New Kind of Wilful Murder’ (1863)
11. Violet Greville, “Victims of Vanity” (1893)
12. Contemporary reports of crinoline and corsets
IV. Men’s Dress
13. “Dress, Dandies, Fashion, &c.,” Fraser’s Magazine (1837)
14. “Modern Beau Brummellism,” London Society (1867)
15. “When I First Put this Uniform On” and costumes from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience (1881)
V. Occasional Dress: Wedding, Mourning, Children’s and Fancy Dress
16. Contemporary reports on Queen Victoria’s wedding dress
17. From Richard Davey’s A History of Mourning (1890)
18. Arden Holt’s Fancy Dresses Described, 2nd edition (1882) and 6th edition (1896)
19. ‘Children Dress’ (1884)
VI. Production and Industry
20. George Dodd, ‘Wallotty Trot’ (1853)
21. ‘How we get Mauve and Tyrian Purple’ (1860)
22. ‘Progress of the Sewing Machine,’ Bow Bells (1865)
VII. International Influences and Echoes
23. ‘Latest from Paris’ (1876)
24. ‘Death of the Leader of the Fashionable World’ (1895)
25. ‘A Japanese Village’ (1885)
VIII. Coda: Reflecting on the Victorians
26. Woolf, ‘Modes and Manners of the Nineteenth Century’ (1910)
Glossary
Further Reading
Index
Fashioning the Victorians is a first-rate contribution to the teaching of 19th century fashion, dress, and culture. Exploring how fashion was deeply integrated into the fabric of the time, this valuable and interdisciplinary book will be the basis of lively classroom discussion.
A well-researched and properly illustrated text that weaves together contemporary sources for a fascinating look into the wardrobes of Victorian Britain.
- Title: Fashioning the Victorians: A Critical Sourcebook
- Author: Rebecca Mitchell
- Series: Dress, Body, Culture
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
- Print Publication Date: 2018
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 264
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350023383, 9781350023406, 135002340X, 1350023388
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350023383
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T12:06:39Z
Rebecca N. Mitchell is Senior Lecturer of Victorian Literature at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of Victorian Lessons in Empathy and Difference (2011) and co-author of Oscar Wilde's Chatterton: Literary History, Romanticism, and the Art of Forgery (2015), among other works.