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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Critic reviews
'An extraordinarily rich record of middle-class Victorian life.. [a] fascinating book' Guardian
'The story of a singular woman... Kate Strasdin's forensic detective work has finally let Mrs Sykes - and her book - speak again.' Judith Flanders
'Irresistible.' The Times
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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