Dressing Up: A History of Fancy Dress in Britain

Abstract

In Dressing Up: A History of Fancy Dress in Britain, Verity Wilson presents a lively and vividly illustrated parade of costumed characters, including Pearly Kings and Queens, Vikings, flower girls, May Queens, highwaymen, suffragettes, Pierrots, musketeers, insects, frogs, cabbages, and folk heroes (and villains). This account covers costumed celebrations and tableaux that have taken place throughout Britain from Queen Victoria’s accession to Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation. Fancy dress has been somewhat neglected by scholars until recently, except costume histories that have largely focused on eighteenth-century masquerade or the spectacular costume balls of the social elite in the Victorian period.1 In this absorbing social history, Wilson delves into photographic archives and reveals the rich and inventive role that “costume” has played in community events and popular pageants, foregrounding the fancy dress of the people, a collective drama played out in front parlors, village greens, church halls, and local high streets for generations.