The Heritage of Dress: Being Notes on the History and Evolution of Clothes

Webb, Wilfred Mark, 1868-1952Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
519K words
Chapters
52

Tags

English Originals CultureFashion Crafts ArtEveryday AttireClothing HistorySocial ObservationIllustrated GuideCustoms EvolutionTraditional AestheticsCultural ChangeFolk CustomsMaterial Culture

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Heritage of Dress: Being Notes on the History and Evolution of Clothes by WebbAuthor: Webb, Wilfred Mark, 1868-1952,Language: English, Class: GT: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation: Manners and customs, Release Date: May 10, 2013

Editor's review

This book is a collection of notes on the history and evolution of dress by the British naturalist Wilfred Mark Webb, issued as an e-book by Project Gutenberg. It does not follow fashion trends but examines, from the perspective of anthropology and material culture, how clothing evolved step by step, covering dress forms, decorative motives, materials and wearing customs, with the plain flavor of early folklore and museum-style observation. Written as essays and notes, it is more a sourcebook than a systematic study; readers can use it to understand how scholars from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century viewed dress, and as supplementary reading in dress history, folklore and design history. It suits fragmented reading: dipping into an entry on a particular garment component or custom is more rewarding than reading straight through. It is especially valuable for readers who want firsthand historical context rather than modern fashion interpretation. Note that it is in English and that some ideas carry the limitations of their era; read with a critical eye.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents first, start with entries on everyday garment components, then expand.
  2. Keep a notebook and compare the dress customs mentioned with cultural phenomena you know.
  3. Read alongside museum costume catalogues or general dress histories to offset the book's lack of system.
  4. Mark judgments that carry period bias, then review and assess them together after finishing.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52

FAQ

Is this a systematic general history of dress? No. The title itself calls them "notes"; the book discusses the history and evolution of clothing in note form, more entry-based and source-oriented than systematic. It is better used as leads on specific topics and as supplementary material than as a chronological textbook.
What language proficiency is needed to read this book? This is an English-language e-book of the original, so some English reading ability is required. The vocabulary leans toward early academic and folklore expression; use a dictionary or bilingual tools, and skip unfamiliar garment terms at first to grasp the overall argument.
Can the views in the book still be adopted directly today? The book preserves the research perspective of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, and some judgments carry period limitations. Treat it as historical material for understanding early approaches to dress studies, and compare specific conclusions with modern dress history and anthropology before using them.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Webb, Wilfred Mark, 1868-1952 Author

Wilfred Mark Webb (1868-1952) was an English naturalist and popular-science writer whose biographical details are only sparsely documented in public sources. Two of his works are held in this collection, dealing respectively with zoology and the culture of dress. In The British Woodlice he gives a systematic account of the forms and habits of British woodlice, showing careful observation and taxonomic competence. The Heritage of Dress traces the history and evolution of clothing in an essayistic manner, placing everyday garments within a broader cultural history. Though wide-ranging in subject, both books reflect a style aimed at general readers, grounded in facts and clarity, drawing knowledge from concrete examples; they are thus both useful for reference and accessible in tone.