Gloves, Past and Present

Smith, Willard M.Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.7

Word count: 182K words
Chapters: 19

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.Gloves, Past and Present by Willard M. SmithAuthor: Smith, Willard M.,Language: English, Class: GT: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation: Manners and customs, Release Date: Jan 9, 2019

Editor's review

Gloves, Past and Present is a short cultural history booklet about gloves, belonging to the literature of customs and material culture. Using gloves, an everyday object, as a thread, the author Willard M. Smith traces changes in their forms, occasions of use, and ceremonial meanings through history, placing seemingly trivial details of dress back into the context of social life. The book's strength lies in seeing the large through the small: a pair of gloves concerns warmth and protection as well as status, etiquette, and aesthetics, and readers can see how material culture carries social norms. As a public-domain ebook, it is short and accessible, suitable for readers interested in craft history, dress culture, or the history of daily life to dip into at leisure. It is best treated as a reference work; reading it while reflecting on the symbolic meaning of gloves on ceremonial occasions will be more rewarding than reading it straight through.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in dress history, craft history, and material culture
Writers and designers who need material on customs and etiquette
Readers who like short cultural essays and are willing to dip into reference books
General readers curious about the history behind small objects of daily life

Not a good fit for

Researchers expecting systematic academic argument and detailed notes
Readers hoping for a complete social or economic history analysis
Readers who prefer literary narration and strong storytelling

Reading tips

Read by chapter theme in a non-linear way, starting with the forms or etiquette sections that interest you most
Keep a pen or digital notes handy and record how gloves' uses and symbolism change across occasions
Read alongside museum collection catalogs or dress-history images to strengthen intuitive understanding of forms
After finishing, spend a few minutes retelling the evolution of gloves' functions and ceremonial meanings to test how much you have absorbed

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.

FAQ

Is this book an academic monograph or a popular work?

Judging by length and approach, it is closer to a popular cultural-history booklet, introducing gloves in terms of form, use, and etiquette in plain, accessible narration. It suits interest reading or reference browsing, but those needing rigorous argument and references should supplement it with more specialized dress-history works.

What types of gloves does the book cover?

The material indicates that the book takes the history and present state of gloves as its theme and belongs to the literature of customs and material culture. Specific categories should be confirmed in the main text; readers can focus on differences in material, form, and ceremonial function among gloves used on different occasions, which is the most noteworthy thread of the book.

The English original is hard going for me. What can I do?

This is a reference work, so there is no need to read every sentence. Skim the table of contents to locate chapters of interest, use a dictionary for key terms, and consult images when encountering object names. If you only want general knowledge, the core chapters are enough, and the rest can be kept for later reference.

Comments

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About the author

Smith, Willard M. Author

Willard M. Smith is an author about whom very little public information is available; the only record in our database shows a single work, Gloves, Past and Present. Judging from its title, the book takes gloves as its subject, tracing their historical development and the changing forms and uses they have taken across different periods. It belongs to the genre of writing that approaches a topic through a particular everyday object, a kind of work that generally requires the author to sift through documentary and material sources and to present the findings in an informative, narrative style rather than a theoretical one. Although the author's biography, nationality and professional background cannot be confirmed, the book itself offers readers interested in the history of gloves an accessible introductory account and reflects the author's attention to the historical development of ordinary objects.