Clothing, Society and Culture in Nineteenth-Century England, Volume 1

Clare Rose, Vivienne Richmond

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000558784
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: History
• Categoria: World History

In recent times clothing has come to be seen as a topic worthy of study, yet there has been little source material available. This three-volume edition presents previously unpublished documents which illuminate key developments and issues in clothing in nineteenth-century England.

Arthur Lynes, Merriment and Modes

DOI: 10.4324/9781003102182-10

Arthur Lynes, Merriment and Modes (London: A. Lynes and Son, 1876), front cover, plate and pp. 79–97.

In Smiles and Styles, published in 1870, Lynes states that:

It has been the custom of our firm, since its establishment twenty-six years ago, to publish half-yearly an amusing Book, which we intended to be not only a catalogue of our prices and a manifesto of our intentions, but a brochure containing some novelty entirely distinct from the business portion of the work. These publications have become more and more successful, and a higher standard of excellence has been achieved in each successive work. The ‘Portfolio of Fashion’, ‘The Kensington Magazine’, ‘Kensington Journal’ and ‘Our Journal’, ¹ has been followed by that now very celebrated and much talked of work, ‘Fun and Fashion’, issued in March, 1870. ²

Lynes’s volumes were lavishly presented, with hard decorative covers and high-quality paper, aligning them with the annuals and gift books for children which were big business in Victorian publishing. They included stories by well-known writers such as Tom Hood and Henry Mayhew; ³ each issue also had a story written by Arthur Lynes himself. Some of them were presented to copyright libraries, and offered to the Literature sections of newspapers for review. One reviewer commented ‘Under this title, Messrs. Lynes, the well-known tailors, have produced a book which may fairly vie with any of the holiday numbers of the most popular magazines, whilst they have at the same time made it the vehicle of advertising their business’. ⁴ Other reviewers were more cynical about Lynes’s motivations, commenting sarcastically on ‘that eminent child of song and commerce, the Poet attached to the establishment of Arthur Lynes’. ⁵ This seems to have been the general view, as the volumes were not kept as literature by the copyright libraries. ⁶ Lynes also submitted some of his volumes to Stationers’ Hall for copyrighting as ‘books commercial’. ⁷

The motivation for these albums seems to have been divided: their production set Lynes apart from other clothing retailers, and their presentation as literature ensured that they would be retained in middle-class homes when ephemeral catalogues like Hyam’s were relegated to the waste paper basket. They might also be accepted as literature in circles that would not have received them as trade publications. There was probably also an element of vanity publishing, if Arthur Lynes himself wished to be accepted as a writer. A work by him called ‘Three Arabian Tales’ was mentioned in 1867; this was apparently not copyrighted and has not survived. ⁸

Advertisements in the literature and commercial sections of the London Standard and regional newspapers offered the volumes free, and with free postage, making them even more attractive to consumers. ⁹ The costs of this method of promotion must have been high, and Lynes and Son took steps to protect their investment. In 1873 they obtained an injunction against John Counsell, publisher of a newspaper called the Man of Ross, to prevent him from reusing excerpts from Stories and Styles. This judgement was given on the basis that ‘the entire series of stories which have appeared in their celebrated magazines … have been written specially for them, and are their sole property’. ¹⁰

The text of the court judgement is interesting in that it gives the names of two individuals, Abraham and Arthur Lynes, as proprietors of the firm. It also describes them as ‘Civil, Military and Naval Tailors’. The ‘military and naval’ side of their work is likely to have been bulk orders of standard uniforms for servicemen, rather than the more prestigious officers’ clothing. In Merriment and Modes (p. 67) Lynes includes a heading for uniforms, and in another catalogue a statement offering clothing for charitable institutions. ¹¹ The ability to produce bulk orders on c...