The Delineator (May 1891)

Digital Changeling > Sewing > Period Resources > The Delineator (May 1891)

I purchased this Magazine through a seller on Abebooks. As you can see from the scans, it's not in the best shape. The cover was detached and lost to posterity and many of the pages are brittle and have slightly mangled edges. The thing that struck me about this issue was, despite these defects, it is the most lushly illustrated fashion magazine from the 1890's I've ever seen. I think out of the approximately 100 pages there are only 5 or 6 that don't have pictures on them.

There are not only many fashion plates in the issue, but also a wide variety of clothes depicted in them. I'm not even a big fan of this particular permutation of giant-topped pouffy sleeves, but I still fell in love with the be-dearstalkered "Ladies' Tourist Toilette" on page 353 (among others). I was also a bit surprised to notice that there's at least one wedding outfit and a neat veil (separate illustration) in there. There's also a great article on "Hat's and Bonnets" and an amazing article with beautiful sketches of Nikko, Japan.

The other notable thing about this issue of the Delineator that observant readers should notice is that this is in fact not the standard American issue of the magazine. So far this is the only Canadian fashion magazine I've got from the Victorian period. Although it was still a product of the Butterick Publishing Co., it was more specifically produced by their branch in Toronto. I have no idea if this had an impact on the fashion plates or articles used in the magazine. I did notice that at least some of the ads are local.

I have a new scanner, and it's color correction works a bit different than my old one. This particular issue is about as yellowed as the scans would suggest. I had some problems with the thin page margins near the center of the issue. There were pages where there was no way for me to open up the spine up enough to get quite all of the text. That was very frustrating, since I didn't want to actually damage the spine any further.

This magazine cost me $50.20 including shipping from Canada. To date it is the most expensive single issue I've purchased. I'm not entirely sure it was worth the cost, but it's a bit late now to send it back. It took me a bit longer than normal to scan it, since it's so delicate. If you enjoy the scans and feel inclined to tip me a dollar or two, I would be very grateful.

I've included both the 100 dpi and 300 dpi versions of the scans below. If you just want to read the magazine (rather than print it out) the smaller ones should work just fine.

Some people have expressed an interest in page thumbnails, so I've added those in. Currently the thumbnails link to the small version of each page.

Download the individual pages (100 dpi and 300 dpi respectively):