This March 1854 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book, published in Philadelphia, offers the famous magazine’s blend of hand-colored fashion plates, fiction, and domestic advice. The plates display the spring styles in gowns, bonnets, and accessories favored by fashionable American women.
Edited by Sarah Josepha Hale, Godey’s was the leading tastemaker for nineteenth-century American women. Its fashion plates remain key sources for costume historians of the period. A rich primary document of antebellum style, this issue is offered here as a free EPUB download. Beyond the plates, its fiction, poetry, and household notes together capture the texture of fashionable American domestic life at mid-century.