[h-cost] Bad books:
After I checked my mail this morning and got all the tips about researching, starting with cconsulting the back of the book, I went and looked in the back of some of my books! One book wasn't a book on fashion, but in it the author rather studies and compares the differences between our society today and Victorian society, and how many of the things that are bad today are the result of things that changed from that era, it really is fascinating and she nails many good points in the head. The bibliography is huge! Most of the literature consists of books written in the 1980s and 90's but there are a few titles, most reprinted, from the 1880s and I noticed that most of those were reprinted by one specific publishing company, so I will look them up. I will be sure to send along any bad books I get but most of my purchases are done so with care to avoid that sort of problem. However, I recall quite a few of those basic costume through history books on our library shelves that were printed I guess mainly for kids doing reports on a specific time period or someone doing a play. Our library system also has the network so that you can reserve/order books from any other library within the system and it's fairly fast cause I did it once, our branch here, though the prettiest library you can imagine, has a very poor selection on such topics for serious researchers, sadly. Even the other titles from other locations were again those broken down overview books where one person has done all the hunting and gathering and sloshed it together into one book. I will remember now that whenever I have one of those, to get a piece of paper and pen or pencil and just browse through the back of it. I have an original book of etiquette from 1880 so I take much of the content of that book more seriously than I would a new book about the Victorian era only such form varied from place to place and what rules applied in one town may not have been weighed so heavily in others. More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com ___ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
Re: [h-cost] Bad books:
Just out of curiosity, does anyone maintain a list of these "Bad Books" for those of us in the early stages of our interest in historical costume? I don't want to look at a book and realize after I buy it that the research is suspect. I have started a list of "good books" to look out for, but a "bad book" list would be very helpful. Barbara ___ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
Re: [h-cost] Bad books:
There is a short bad books list at Jessamyn's Closet. The lady is very nice and I'm sure she would welcome suggestions for additions to the list. http://jessamynscloset.com/badbooks.html I second the recommendation against anything by John Peacock. Melanie Schuessler On Feb 22, 2008, at 8:24 AM, Barbara wrote: Just out of curiosity, does anyone maintain a list of these "Bad Books" for those of us in the early stages of our interest in historical costume? I don't want to look at a book and realize after I buy it that the research is suspect. I have started a list of "good books" to look out for, but a "bad book" list would be very helpful. Barbara ___ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume ___ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
Re: [h-cost] Bad books:
Melanie Schuessler wrote: There is a short bad books list at Jessamyn's Closet. The lady is very nice and I'm sure she would welcome suggestions for additions to the list. http://jessamynscloset.com/badbooks.html Some of those books really are not that bad. What a lot of people forget when doing research of any kind is that you need more than a single source. I don't know if they still teach that in grade school, to use at least 3 sources -- and not one of them can be the encyclopedia. By the time you hit high school or college it should have been taught, but there still seem to be a lot of adults who base their evidence off a single drawing or portrait. Further, the list on that website was taken (without credit) from an article in the SCA publication Compleat Anachronist #39 Costume Studies II, which itself was reprinted from a newsletter series called "Seams Like Old Times". The issue should still be available from the SCA stock clerk for $4 or $5. There is a lengthy annotation for each entry which explains WHY it is a bad source, and the bibliography -- which is 33 pages long -- also has a number of good recommended sources in it. Although most of the books listed date from the 40's to the 70's and have been out of print for decades, they still show up and can be useful sources. Dawn ___ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
Re: [h-cost] Bad books:
- Original Message - From: "Dawn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Some of those books really are not that bad. ... Although most of the books listed date from the 40's to the 70's and have been out of print for decades, they still show up and can be useful sources. Along those lines, as I am busy spending scads of time looking for wills & inventories on Google books, I'd like to make sure that people don't get confused and think that everything written on historical matters during the era of Bad Costuming Books is worthless. People in the 19th century seemed to have a positive mania for transcribing very useful historical documents. -E House ___ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
Re: [h-cost] Bad books:
In a message dated 2/22/2008 9:06:53 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://jessamynscloset.com/badbooks.html *** She lists "Braun and Schneider. Historic Costume in Pictures" I'm sorry but I love this book. However, I also know it's from the 1840's. [You can clearly see it in the silhouettes of the women's clothes...in any period] This makes it kinda fun, especially when they do the Orient. And I love the Nationalistic costumes...which are indeed costumes. I think it's worth having. But no one in their right mind would consider it a completely accurate history. **Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duffy/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp0030002598) ___ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
Re: [h-cost] Bad books:
On Friday 22 February 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > In a message dated 2/22/2008 9:06:53 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > http://jessamynscloset.com/badbooks.html > > > > *** > > She lists > > "Braun and Schneider. Historic Costume in Pictures" > > I'm sorry but I love this book. However, I also know it's from the 1840's. > [You can clearly see it in the silhouettes of the women's clothes...in any > period] This makes it kinda fun, especially when they do the Orient. And I > love the Nationalistic costumes...which are indeed costumes. I think it's > worth having. But no one in their right mind would consider it a > completely accurate history. There are definitely reasons to have some of these "bad" books (as she said, Robin Netherton collects them as evidence of different types of misconceptions about the costume of earlier periods that have infected the accepted "knowledge" across the history of costume research). I don't detest Peacock, for example, because though he can't draw period silhouettes with great accuracy his timeline books give a useful general idea of types of change over time--particularly if you are already familiar with period styles from period art and other sources. The biggest generalization I would make about the "bad" books is that they should not be given as a first, second, or third book to beginners, because they tend to give people the wrong mindset and other kinds of wrong ideas about historic costume and costume research. I was fortunate in that the first costume history books I encountered were the ones written by the Cunningtons. They use redrawings, true, but they're reasonably faithful redrawings, usually with indications of what the original source is, and they are steeped in the idea that period art should be a first stop in attempting to learn about period costume. -- Cathy Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "You affect the world by what you browse."-- Tim Berners-Lee ___ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
Re: [h-cost] Bad books:
On Feb 22, 2008, at 12:52 PM, Exstock wrote: - Original Message - From: "Dawn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Some of those books really are not that bad. ... Although most of the books listed date from the 40's to the 70's and have been out of print for decades, they still show up and can be useful sources. Along those lines, as I am busy spending scads of time looking for wills & inventories on Google books, I'd like to make sure that people don't get confused and think that everything written on historical matters during the era of Bad Costuming Books is worthless. People in the 19th century seemed to have a positive mania for transcribing very useful historical documents. They did indeed, and it's a great help. I would never say *all* Victorian sources were bad; it's more complicated than that. Although any Victorian source needs to be checked out -- and we should be doing that anyway. I think the problem is mainly that Victorian writers on the Middle Ages and Renaissance were very, very confident. They were *certain* that they could look at a fragmentary, incomplete artifact and "restore" it to what it looked like when it was new. They also seem to have been fairly relaxed about generalzing from very few examples. Modern researchers are much more cautious, and try to question their own biases and to not make any assumptions beforehand. I'd still say "not reliable" is a good starting assumption when looking at Victorian sources, but that doesn't make them useless. OChris Laning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Davis, California + http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com ___ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
