Enfilade

From Bloomsbury:

Matthew McCormack, Shoes and the Georgian Man (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2025), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-1350358676 (hardback), £85, $100 / ISBN: 978-1350358669 (paperback), £29, $40.

Shoes are everyday objects, but they are loaded with meaning. This book reveals how shoes played a powerful role in the wider story of shifts in gender relations in 18th-century Britain. It focuses on the relationship of shoes with the body and its movements, and therefore how what we wear on our feet relates closely to social, occupational, and gender roles. It also uses footwear to explore topics such as politics, war, dance, and disability. Thinking about shoes as material objects, McCormack studied historic shoes first-hand in museums, in order to ascertain their physical properties and what they would have been like to wear. Worn shoes preserve traces of the wearer’s body in their indentations, stretches and scuffs, providing a unique primary source about their wearer. This approach forges new connections between the histories or material culture, gender, and the body, and sheds new light on what it meant to be a man in the 18th century.

Matthew McCormack is Professor of History at the University of Northampton, course leader for MA History, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Higher Education Academy. His previous books include The Independent Man: Citizenship and Gender Politics in Georgian England, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England, and Citizenship and Gender in Britain, 1688–1928. He edited the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2015–20).

c o n t e n t s

List of Figures
Acknowledgements

Introduction
1  Georgian Men and Their Shoes
2  Shoes and the Body
3  Shoes and Politics
4  Boots and Masculinity
5  Gout Shoes and Disability
6  Dancing Feet
7  The Soldier’s Shoe
Conclusion: Wearing Georgian Shoes

Select Bibliography
Index

Registration for an online conversation about the book is available via Eventbrite:

Online Conversation: Shoes and the Georgian Man
Tuesday, 11 March 2025, 2pm EDT

Serena Dyer talks with Matthew McCormack about his new book, Shoes and the Georgian Man, published by Bloomsbury in January 2025. By Leicester Branch of the Historical Assn.

From Reaktion Books with distribution by The University of Chicago Press:

Chris Filstrup and Jane Merrill, The Turban: A History from East to West (London: Reaktion Books, 2025), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-1836390749, £20 / $30.

A superbly illustrated history of the turban, from Arabian origins to global cultural icon.

A turban is a strip of cloth folded and wrapped around the head; however, this description includes multifarious forms across space and time. This book follows the turban as it moves from the Arabian Peninsula through the Ottoman Empire to Europe and the Americas. It directs the reader’s gaze from traditional and religious uses of the turban into the realms of international trade, Renaissance art and contemporary fashions. Turbans, as this book shows, have moved in and out of Western culture, at times considered archaic and forgotten, then noticed and reinstated as major accessories. Today Sikh men are recognized by their distinctive headwraps, and the turban remains an important part of Black culture. This book explores the turban’s many adaptations worldwide.

Chris Filstrup was Chief of the Oriental Division at the New York Public Library and Dean of Libraries at Stony Brook University. He is co-author with Jane Merrill of The Wedding Night (2011) among other titles. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
Jane Merrill has written for many national U.S. magazines and is the author of The Showgirl Costume (2018) and other cultural histories. She lives in Saint George, Maine.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction
1  A Path into Western Iconography
2  Trade, Diplomacy and Depiction
3  Nabobs, Adventurers and Travellers
4  Masques and Turquerie
5  Riding the Magic Carpet
6  A Neoclassical Accessory
7  Individual Expressions: Africa and the Caribbean
8  Cultural Tourism and Authenticity since 1900

References
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index