In this episode I'm joined by Dr Danielle Dove, whose research focuses on dress and fashion history, material culture, and literary celebrity. We consider how dress can be linked to the uncanny, utilising new materialism and object-oriented ontology theories to explore the idea that objects (such as items of dress) have a form of agency, and how neo-Victorian sartorial objects seem to have an impact or effect on the protagonists. Particularly, they often have a form of memory (physical or psychological) of past wearers. We think about how second hand or vintage clothes evoke memories of the Victorian period, and the wearers who came before us. We consider the continued fascination with period dress, despite the impracticalities of wearing some of those outfits today, and the enduring legacy of the 19th century in relation to dress and material culture.

About my guest: Dr Danielle Dove is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Surrey. Her research and publications centre on Victorian and neo-Victorian literature with a specific emphasis on dress and fashion history, material culture, and literary celebrity. She is the co-editor of Neo-Victorian Things: Re-Imagining Nineteenth-Century Material Cultures in Literature and Film (2022, Palgrave Macmillan) and is currently working on her monograph provisionally titled Victorian Dress in Contemporary Historical Fiction (forthcoming with Bloomsbury).

For more information on Danielle's work, check out the details below:
Twitter: @Danielle_M_Dove
Academic profile: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/danielle-mariann-dove

Check out Danielle's suggestions:
Richard Flanagan - Wanting
Diana Souhami - Gwendolen: A Novel
Barbara Ewing - The Petticoat Men

Episode Credits:

Episode Writer, Editor and Producer: Emma Catan
Music: Burning Steaks (by Stationary Sign) - obtained via EpidemicSound

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