Jane Austen Fashion

Fashion and needlework in the works of Jane Austen

By Penelope Byrde
£9.99 paperback
ISBN 978-0-9539561-3-5
128 pages, 36 colour plates
Published 2008, reprinted 2014.

Jane Austen loved clothes, and followed fashion with enthusiasm. She was also an expert needlewoman. Her novels use the clothes people wore and their attitudes to dress to convey their characters. Her lively letters, extensively quoted, are full of shopping trips and visits to dressmakers. Penelope Byrde, an expert in the costume of the time, explains all, from corsets to topcoats: how clothes were made and bought, what they cost, and what was worn when and by whom.