Clothing and Landscape in Victorian England: Working-Class Dress and Rural Life

At the beginning of the Victorian period, most of England's population lived in the countryside; by its end, the balance had tipped towards living in urban and suburban spaces. In the context of this rapidly changing world, Rachel Worth explores the ways in which the clothing of the rural working classes was represented visually in paintings and photographs and by the literary sources of documentary, autobiography and fiction, as well as by the collection and conservation of garments of rural provenance by museums. Worth explores the ways in which clothing and its representations throw light on wider social and cultural issues, as well as how 'traditional' styles of dress, like men's smock-frocks or women's sun-bonnets, came to be replaced by 'fashion'. Her compelling study adds breadth to the history of dress by considering it within its social and cultural contexts, and shows how clothing enriches our understanding of Victorian social history.