Joan L. Severa

This is a big book with many illustrations and must have been a tremendous amount of work requiring enormous expertise. Nevertheless, I was somewhat disappointed because it was recommended to me as a book that could be used to date photographs and it is not. The author may be familiar with 19th century fashion but would almost certainly fail a test in logic because photographs have been re-dated based entirely on the clothing worn by the subjects. Yes, the book is about "Ordinary Americans and Fashion, 1840-1900" but only the clothing can be dated that way, not the photographs because everyone in the photographs is not wearing new clothing. The author of the book dates photos without consulting other resources and that is a problem. Photos with identified subjects are better dated by the age of the subject. Bottom line, a 5 year old child in hand-me-down clothes is still a 5 year old.

For example, the photo on page 334 of Miss "M. McDaunt" by Mathew Brady has been dated by the National Archives as having been taken in the early 1860's. In this book it is dated 10 years later based on her clothing. Unfortunately, the bottom 1/5 or so of the photograph is not shown in the book so that the portion of her skirt on which part of the dating was based is not visible.… (altro)