Shoes and the Georgian Man

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Description

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 wearers 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.

Author Bio

Matthew McCormack is Professor of History at the University of Northampton, UK, 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, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England and Citizenship and Gender in Britain, 1688-1928. He edited the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2015-20). He regularly blogs, and tweets at @historymatt.