This May 1854 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book continues the famous magazine’s blend of hand-colored fashion plates, fiction, and domestic advice. The plates present the late-spring styles in gowns, bonnets, and accessories favored by fashionable American women.
Edited by Sarah Josepha Hale, Godey’s was the foremost arbiter of taste for nineteenth-century American women. Its fashion plates remain prized sources for historians of dress. A rich primary document of antebellum style, this issue is offered here as a free EPUB download. Beyond the plates, its fiction, poetry, and domestic notes together capture the texture of fashionable American life at mid-century.