Ebook: Dress in Anglo-Saxon England

When it first came out in 1986, Gale Owen-Crocker's book was a milestone in costume studies, a foundation on which much work has subsequently been based. Nearly twenty years later, there is more to be said, and this updated edition is long overdue. An encyclopaedic study of English dress from the fifth to the eleventh centuries, it draws evidence from archaeology, text and art (manuscripts, ivories, metalwork, stone sculpture, mosaics), and also from re-enactors' experience. It examines archaeological textiles, cloth production and the significance of imported cloth and foreign fashions. Dress is discussed as a marker of gender, ethnicity, status and social role - in the context of a pagan burial, dress for holy orders, bequests of clothing, commissioning a kingly wardrobe, and much else - and surviving dress fasteners and accessories are examined with regard to type and to geographical/chronological distribution. There are colour reconstructions of early Anglo-Saxon dress and a cutting pattern for a gown from the Bayeux tapestry; Old English garment names are discussed, and there is a glossary of costume and other relevant terms.

GALE OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. She has a special interest in dress throughout the medieval period - she advises on dress entries to the Toronto Old English Dictionary and has consulted for many museums and television companies. She is co-editor of the new journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Generously illustrated with 25 plates, 12 in colour, and 140 drawings.