Faye Hammill is Professor of English Literature and Canadian Studies, University of Glasgow. She specialises in twentieth-century literature and print culture and is author or co-author of six previous books.

An innovative, well-written and clearly structured book, well-researched in terms of literary and cultural history... Its principal contribution is the establishment of productive links between the study of literature, fashion and technology in a wide historical scope, from Sentimentalism to late Modernism. This makes the book a unique contribution to both literary and cultural studies.ESSE 2012 Judging Panel (Winner of 2012 Book Award for Literatures in the English Language)

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Reading sophistication1. Scandal, sentiment and shepherdesses: the emergence of modern sophistication2. Childhood, consumption and decadence: Victorian and Edwardian sophistication3. Melancholy, modernity and the middlebrow: the twenties and thirties4. Nostalgia, glamour and excess: the postwar decadesConclusion: ‘The problem of leisure’: millennial sophisticationBibliographyIndex

Faye Hammill is Professor of English Literature and Canadian Studies, University of Glasgow. She specialises in twentieth-century literature and print culture and is author or co-author of six previous books.

An innovative, well-written and clearly structured book, well-researched in terms of literary and cultural history... Its principal contribution is the establishment of productive links between the study of literature, fashion and technology in a wide historical scope, from Sentimentalism to late Modernism. This makes the book a unique contribution to both literary and cultural studies.ESSE 2012 Judging Panel (Winner of 2012 Book Award for Literatures in the English Language)

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Reading sophistication1. Scandal, sentiment and shepherdesses: the emergence of modern sophistication2. Childhood, consumption and decadence: Victorian and Edwardian sophistication3. Melancholy, modernity and the middlebrow: the twenties and thirties4. Nostalgia, glamour and excess: the postwar decadesConclusion: ‘The problem of leisure’: millennial sophisticationBibliographyIndex

Faye Hammill is Professor of English Literature and Canadian Studies, University of Glasgow. She specialises in twentieth-century literature and print culture and is author or co-author of six previous books.

An innovative, well-written and clearly structured book, well-researched in terms of literary and cultural history... Its principal contribution is the establishment of productive links between the study of literature, fashion and technology in a wide historical scope, from Sentimentalism to late Modernism. This makes the book a unique contribution to both literary and cultural studies.ESSE 2012 Judging Panel (Winner of 2012 Book Award for Literatures in the English Language)

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Reading sophistication1. Scandal, sentiment and shepherdesses: the emergence of modern sophistication2. Childhood, consumption and decadence: Victorian and Edwardian sophistication3. Melancholy, modernity and the middlebrow: the twenties and thirties4. Nostalgia, glamour and excess: the postwar decadesConclusion: ‘The problem of leisure’: millennial sophisticationBibliographyIndex