At the Mercy of Their Clothes - Modernism, the Middlebrow, and British Garment Culture

At the Mercy of Their Clothes explores the agency of fashion in modern literature. Celia Marshik¿s study combines close readings of modernist and middlebrow works, a history of Britain in the early twentieth century, and the insights of thing theory.

List of contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: At the Mercy of Their Clothes
1. What Do Women Want? At the Mercy of the Evening Gown
2. Wearable Memorials: Into and Out of the Trenches with the Modern Mac
3. Aspiration to the Extraordinary: Materializing the Subject Through Fancy Dress
4. Serialized Selves: Style, Identity, and the Problem of the Used Garment
Coda: Precious Clothing
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Celia Marshik is professor of English at Stony Brook University. She is the author of British Modernism and Censorship (2006) and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Culture (2014).

Summary

At the Mercy of Their Clothes explores the agency of fashion in modern literature. Celia Marshik’s study combines close readings of modernist and middlebrow works, a history of Britain in the early twentieth century, and the insights of thing theory.

Additional text

Marshik’s work brings a critical and indispensable lens to the impact and effects of clothing in the twentieth century and will be of interest to Woolf scholars and a wide range of scholars interested in popular culture, middlebrow and modernist texts, and history.

Product details

• Authors: Celia Marshik, Marshik Celia
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.10.2021
• EAN: 9780231175050
• ISBN: 978-0-231-17505-0
• No. of pages: 264
• Series: Modernist Latitudes
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Art history; Non-fiction book > Dictionaries, reference works > Foreign-language dictionaries; European History, 20th Century, ART / History / General, HISTORY / World, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, ART / European, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / 20th Century, DESIGN / Graphic Arts / Commercial & Corporate, General & world history, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, History of Art, British & Irish history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, History of art & design styles: from c 1900 -, Industrial / commercial art & design, Literature: history & criticism, General and world history, Literature: history and criticism, Design, Industrial and commercial arts, illustration