Shoes and the Georgian Man

Matthew McCormack

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350358690
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

Shoes are everyday objects but they are loaded with meaning. This book reveals how shoes played a powerful role in the wider story of shifts in gender relations in 18th-century Britain. It focuses on the relationship of shoes with the body and its movements, and therefore how what we wear on our feet relates closely to social, occupational and gender roles. It also uses footwear to explore topics such as politics, war, dance and disability.

Thinking about shoes as material objects, McCormack studied historic shoes first-hand in museums, in order to ascertain their physical properties and what they would have been like to wear. Worn shoes preserve traces of the wearer's body in their indentations, stretches and scuffs, providing a unique primary source about their wearer. This approach forges new connections between the histories or material culture, gender and the body, and sheds new light on what it meant to be a man in the 18th century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Georgian men and their shoes
• 2 Shoes and the body
• 3 Shoes and politics
• 4 Boots and masculinity
• 5 Gout shoes and disability
• 6 Dancing feet
• 7 The soldier’s shoe
• Conclusion: Wearing Georgian shoes
• Select bibliography
• Index
• Copyright