The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The hidden fabric of a Victorian woman's life - from family and friends to industry and Empire - told through her unique textile scrapbook.

In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes.

Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages.

Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry.

This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.

'An extraordinarily rich record of middle-class Victorian life.. [a] fascinating book' Guardian

'Irresistable' The Times

'The story of a singular woman... Kate Strasdin's forensic detective work has finally let Mrs Sykes - and her book - speak again' JUDITH FLANDERS

©2023 Kate Strasdin (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • Strasdin’s painstaking detective work has uncovered many of the fascinating insights behind the fabric swatches contained in this unusual collection

    Sunday Times

  • Snippets of fabric, snippets of biographical detail, snippets of historical evidence – this is a book entirely made up of snippets and I found it irresistible

    Ysenda Maxtone Graham, The Times

  • ‘[A] questing and poignant social history’

    Hephzibah Anderson, The Observer

  • An extraordinarily rich record of middle-class Victorian life, both at home and abroad… [a] fascinating book

    Guardian

  • This is a wonderful book! The life of a woman, a time and an industry, woven, like cloth, into something unique and beguiling. A treat for the curious reader

    Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words

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