Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Complete View of the Dress and Habits of the People of England, Vol. 1
I shall not pretend to apologise for the introduction of this work to the inspection of the Public. If it possesses a sufficient portion of merit to recommend itself to notice, I am certain it will meet with a favourable reception: if it does not, undoubtedly it will be rejected with justice.
It may perhaps be unnecessary for me in favour of its novelty to premise, that there is no such work in the English language at least, none sufficiently extensive and regular to display the prevalent fashions of our ancestors through every century.
The Engravings, which form the most material part of this publication, are taken from drawings in Manuscripts co'e'val with the times that they are intended to illustrate, or other monuments of antiquity equally authentic; and they are faithfully copied from the originals, without an additional fold being made to the draperies, or the least deviation from the form of the garments.
In the arrangement of the figures, a task attended with no small difficulty, it has been my study to render them interesting by grouping them as pleasingly as the nature of the subject would admit; and the ornamental embellishments of every kind are not, in any instance, the work of my own imagination, but accurate specimens of ancient art, and extracted from the same manuscript that the figures, or some of them at least, are taken.
The Introduction contains a general outline of the various dresses that have existed in the ancient world, and extended no farther than what seemed necessary for the fuller explanation of the early habits of our ancestors. The engravings.
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