Speaker details:
Dr Danielle Dove
Biography:
Dr Danielle Dove is a Surrey Future Fellow and Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Surrey. Her research centres on Victorian material culture, dress, and fashion. She is the author of Victorian Dress in Contemporary Historical Fiction: Materiality, Agency and Narrative (Bloomsbury 2023) and is currently working on her second monograph which examines fashion and sustainability from the nineteenth century to the present.
Talk abstract:
Following the death of her husband Prince Albert in 1861, Queen Victoria entered into a period of intense, public grieving which lasted forty years. Relinquishing many of her duties and adopting black mourning attire which she would wear for the remainder of her life, she enhanced and popularised the Victorian cult of mourning.
In this short talk, Danielle Dove will explore the ritualistic dressing practices associated with Victorian mourning. Examining Widows’ Weeds, mourning handkerchiefs, and jet jewellery, she will trace the complex rules and various representations of Victorian mourning dress in nineteenth-century print culture and visual art.
