Award Date
December 2018
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
First Committee Member
Elizabeth White Nelson
Second Committee Member
Deidre Clemente
Third Committee Member
Michael Green
Fourth Committee Member
John Hay
Number of Pages
197
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the fashion plates in Godey’s Lady’s Book and the way the publisher of Godey’s, Louis Godey, and the editor, Sarah Hale, engaged with the fashion plates. The format of Godey’s combined fashion plates, domestic advice, and literature; it defined the genre of women’s magazines for almost half a century. Godey’s Lady’s Book was established by Louis Godey in 1830. In 1837 he hired Sarah Hale as literary editor. This partnership lasted for forty years until they both retired from the magazine in 1877. Throughout the forty years Louis Godey and Sarah Hale worked together, the fashion plates were continually improved to make them better than the competition. The plates were both instructional and entertaining. While the fashion plates were used by Godey to promote his magazine, Sarah Hale used the plates as teaching tools to disseminate information about how to live a sentimental, domestic life. Although the clothing shown in the plates were long out of fashion, in the 1920s the plates were reprinted and sold in framed versions. In the 1930s, consumer goods decorated with Godey-themed images were very popular. These items, which included framed prints, book ends, lamp shades, playing cards and make-up boxes. In many instances these nineteenth-century images were included in Colonial Revival interiors, collapsing the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into a usable past that allowed to consumers to day dream about what the past in a detached, enjoyable way.
Keywords
Engravings; Fashion; Fashion Plates; Godey's Lady's Book; Louis Godey; Sarah Hale
Disciplines
History
File Format
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Bukowski, Maggie, "“Need We Mention Our Fashions? “The Educational, Entertaining, and Nostalgic Uses of Godey’s Lady’s Book Fashion Plates, 1830 To 1940" (2018). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 3407.
http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/14279046
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/