The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes
Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe
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The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes
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Narrated by:
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Karen Cass
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By:
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Kate Strasdin
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
The hidden fabric of a Victorian woman's life - from family and friends to industry and Empire - told through her unique textile scrapbook.
In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes.
Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages.
Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry.
This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.
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'An extraordinarily rich record of middle-class Victorian life.. [a] fascinating book' Guardian
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The Husband Hunters
- American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy
- By: Anne de Courcy
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 682
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 582
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 579
Towards the end of the 19th century and for the first few years of the 20th, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege, and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, 50 years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known "Dollar Princess", married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bondfide Valuable History Lesson
- By A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. on 09-21-18
By: Anne de Courcy
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A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain
- By: Michael Paterson
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4 out of 5 stars 87
The Victorian era has dominated the popular imagination like no other period, but these myths and stories also give a very distorted view of the 19th century. The early Victorians were much stranger than we usually imagine, and their world would have felt very different from our own. It was only during the long reign of the Queen that a modern society emerged in unexpected ways.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Brief, But Insightful
- By Troy on 07-17-13
By: Michael Paterson
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Vanderbilt
- The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- By: Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
- Narrated by: Anderson Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 5,809
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,040
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5,013
New York Times best-selling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times best-selling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty - his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting Approach to a Well Known History
- By HistoryNerd on 09-24-21
By: Anderson Cooper, and others
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The Time Traveler's Guide to Regency Britain
- By: Ian Mortimer
- Narrated by: Ian Mortimer
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 131
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 129
In the latest volume of his celebrated series of Time Traveler's Guides, Ian Mortimer turns to what is arguably the most-loved period in British history—the Regency, or Georgian England. A time of exuberance, thrills, frills, and unchecked bad behavior, it was perhaps the last age of true freedom before the arrival of the stifling world of Victorian morality. At the same time, it was a period of transition. Conveying the sights, sounds, and smells of the Regency period, this is history at its most exciting—the past not as something to be studied, but as lived experience.
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2 out of 5 stars
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SKIP THIS BOOK
- By Lady Aristotle on 09-05-22
By: Ian Mortimer
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Corsets and Codpieces
- A History of Outrageous Fashion, from Roman Times to the Modern Era
- By: Karen Bowman
- Narrated by: Susan Duerden
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
Have you ever wondered why we wear the type of clothes we do? Packed with outlandish outfits, this exciting history of fashion trends reveals the flamboyant fashions adopted (and discarded) by our ancestors. In the days before cosmetic surgery, people used bum rolls and bombastic breeches to augment their figures, painted their faces with poisonous concoctions, and doused themselves with scent to cover body odor.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A poorly researched and weirdly sexist read
- By Interregnum Rex on 08-26-17
By: Karen Bowman
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All That She Carried
- The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
- By: Tiya Miles
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 333
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 285
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 285
In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the sack in spare, haunting language. Historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of slavery.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An Astonishing Feat of Scholarship, Imagination and Empathy
- By Cin on 06-30-21
By: Tiya Miles
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The Five
- The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper
- By: Hallie Rubenhold
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,328
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,146
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,140
Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women. For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Everyone needs to read/listen to this book
- By AAHickman on 12-05-19
By: Hallie Rubenhold
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To Marry an English Lord
- By: Gail MacColl, Carol McD. Wallace
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 427
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 383
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Story4 out of 5 stars 384
From the Gilded Age until 1914, more than 100 American heiresses invaded Britannia and swapped dollars for titles - just like Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, the first of the Downton Abbey characters Julian Fellowes was inspired to create after reading To Marry An English Lord. Filled with vivid personalities, gossipy anecdotes, grand houses, and a wealth of period details-plus quotes and the finer points of Victorian and Edwardian etiquette - To Marry An English Lord is social history at its liveliest and most accessible.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not Great on Audio
- By Lynne on 03-10-16
By: Gail MacColl, and others
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Remembering Shanghai
- A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels
- By: Isabel Sun Chao, Claire Chao
- Narrated by: Rachel Yong, Claire Chao, Isabel Sun Chao
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations, from vibrant Shanghai to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity and loss against the epic backdrop of a country in turmoil.
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5 out of 5 stars
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touching stories of resilience and family
- By Rodger on 01-17-21
By: Isabel Sun Chao, and others
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Mademoiselle
- Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History
- By: Rhonda Garelick
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 148
Little black dresses. Fake pearls. Jersey knit. Blazers. Ballet flats. Today - and for nearly the last hundred years - we all see some version of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel every time we pass a woman on the street. But few among us realize that Chanel’s role in the events of the twentieth century was as pervasive as her influence on fashion, or how deeply she absorbed and then brilliantly reimagined the historical currents around her.
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1 out of 5 stars
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An Unlikable Portrait
- By Sara on 09-25-16
By: Rhonda Garelick
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The Cartiers
- The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire
- By: Francesca Cartier Brickell
- Narrated by: Hattie Morahan
- Length: 23 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 545
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 467
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 466
The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create” and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful Experience to Listen to This Story
- By BB on 01-12-20
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Victorian London
- The Life of a City, 1840-1870
- By: Liza Picard
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 41
Like her previous books, this book will be the result of the author's passionate interest in the realities of everyday life, and the conditions in which most people lived, so often left out of history books. This period of mid-Victorian London encompasses a huge range of subjects.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Unforgettable journey into the past
- By Adeliese Baumann on 05-27-18
By: Liza Picard
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The Last Castle
- The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home
- By: Denise Kiernan
- Narrated by: Denise Kiernan
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 989
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 881
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 877
Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York's best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Very factual
- By Jennifer on 11-28-17
By: Denise Kiernan
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The Earl and the Pharaoh
- From the Real Downton Abbey to the Discovery of Tutankhamun
- By: The Countess of Carnarvon
- Narrated by: The Countess of Carnarvon
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
Bestselling author the Countess of Carnarvon tells the thrilling behind-the-scenes story of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun on its centennial, and explores the unparalleled life of family ancestor George Herbert—the famed Egyptologist, world-traveler, and 5th Earl of Carnarvon behind it—whose country house, Highclere Castle, is the setting of the beloved series Downton Abbey.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Plodding Family History…Akin to Listening to Paint Dry
- By J. Willis-Opalenik on 10-31-23
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Martha Washington
- An American Life
- By: Patricia Brady
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 75
With this revelatory and painstakingly researched book, Martha Washington, the invisible woman of American history, at last gets the biography she deserves. In place of the domestic frump of popular imagination, Patricia Brady resurrects the wealthy, attractive, and vivacious young widow who captivated the youthful George Washington. And even as it brings Martha Washington into sharper and more accurate focus, this sterling life sheds light on her marriage, her society, and the precedents she established for future First Ladies.
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5 out of 5 stars
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DAR Book Club
- By Kimberly Dillard on 12-26-23
By: Patricia Brady
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Alice Behind Wonderland
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 104
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4 out of 5 stars 88
On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London. Simon Winchester deftly uses the resulting image - as unsettling as it is famous, and the subject of bottomless speculation - as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of English literature.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not Long Enough
- By thefrogman on 06-18-12
By: Simon Winchester
What listeners say about The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Maria Teresa Penna
- 08-10-23
A fascinating voyage through fashion history
One may think that fashion isn’t important but The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes tells us otherwise. The snips of cloth in her dress diary tell the fascinating story of 19th c industrialization and the people responsible for it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Debra Tydd
- 02-29-24
Charming
This book was of interest to me because I enjoy learning about Victorian life, as well as textiles. The research that the author undertook was quite amazingly thorough, and she managed to extract, from what initially seemed very little information, a wonderful life story. The narrator was quite perfectly in tune with the tone of the story.
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