Review: The Lady’s Stratagem

The Lady’s Stratagem: A Repository of 1820s Directions for the Toilet, Mantua-Making, Stay-Making, Millinery & Etiquette

Edited, translated, and with additional material by Frances Grimble
Trade Paperback, 1 2/3 x 11, 755 pages
ISBN 978-0-9636517-7-8
$75.00US, $94.11CDN
The Lady’s Stratagem is a tome of historic proportions, not just because of its historic nature, but breadth of information. Translated from the original French text, The Lady’s Stratagem of the 1820s offers advice, directions and commentary on everything from dress and corset making to gaining weight, millinery to cosmetic recipes, deportment to embroidery, with references drawn from other contemporary guides. It will tell you the correct and preferred method for creating and sending invitations for all manner of social occasions. It will guide you through embroidery and the stratagems of matrimonial harmony.

Whether an historian or novelist, re-enactor or docent, I highly recommend you clean out your wallet and own this book; it is an indispensable, primary source reference tool.
The Lady’s Stratagem is available in print only from most online retailers, although conspicuously absent from Chapters and W.H.Smith, or directly from the publisher at Lavolta Press.