Customer Reviews

Victorian Fashions: A Pictorial Archive, 965 Illustrations (Dover Pictorial Archive)

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I would rank this book just behind Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper's Bazar, 1867-1898 (Dover Pictorial Archives) by Stella Blum and Full-Color Victorian Fashions : 1870-1893 by JoAnne Olian. If you have to be selected go with the first two before this one, but I still highly recommend this to round out the collection. More than 900 very detailed crisp drawing from the marvelous people at Dover Publishing again. They bring you inexpensive books that are a wealth of information, writers of period romance just cannot live without.

Every student of 19th-century fashion needs to have six books from Dover Publications in his or her library:

- Victorian Fashions and Costumes from 'Harper's Bazar', Stella Blum;
- Victorian and Edwardian Fashions from La Mode Illustree, Joanne Olian;
- Wedding Fashions 1860-1912, Joanne Olian;
- Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey, Alison Gernsheim;
- English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century, C. Willett Cunnington;
- and this book.

Carol Grafton's book is really more of an assemblage of pictures for illustrators than anything else, but what pictures! Over 900 B&W drawings lovingly display every little detail of the elaborate costumes of the Victorian and early Edwardian eras from the mid-1850's to 1903. This book doesn't have much in the way of text so it's not as comprehensive a research resource as some of the others that I've mentioned, but as an auxiliary resource to the other books on the above list, it's perfect.

This is a lovely, simple book. There's a one page introduction at the beginning, and the rest of book is comprised of detailed black and white illustrations from a variety of publications (Godey's Lady's Book, Peterson's Magazine, Harper's Bazar, La Mode Ilustree, etc.) About 7 to 8 outfits/accessories are shown per page. Pages are ordered chronologically with the year at the bottom.

My only issue with this book is that the content is not quite evenly distributed; nearly 75% of the book is dedicated to the 1880's and '90's, while the 1850's, '60's, and '70's receive much less attention. I'm not sure if this is a result of older material being hard to find, but I personally would have preferred a more uniform distribution of the material.

For those who are curious, here are the number of pages dedicated to specific years:

1855-1859 - 1 page
1860-1864 - 4 pages
1865-1869 - 6 pages
1870-1874 - 6.5 pages
1875-1879 - 5.5 pages
1880-1884 - 9 pages
1885-1889 - 15 pages
1890-1894 - 28 pages
1895-1899 - 28 pages
1900-1903 - 22 pages

Nonetheless, it's a beautiful book. If you're looking for a cursory look of Victorian fashion or more specifically interested in the '80's and '90's, I would definitely recommend it!

Got this for a gift for my mother. She loves it.
The book is as it says, A Pictorial Archive. It's just pictures.