Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd’s In Vanity Fair is a light early twentieth-century work centered on frocks, femininity, and the social whirl of fashionable women. Through its sketches and stories, dress becomes the medium through which character, vanity, and ambition are revealed, in the witty social-comedy vein of its period.
Though a work of popular literature rather than costume history, the book is saturated with the fashion sensibility of its age, lingering over gowns, accessories, and the rituals of looking well. It offers an entertaining glimpse of how clothing shaped feminine identity. A charming period piece, it is available here as a free EPUB download.