Top Hat, Fashion Magazine, and Shoppiness: Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Material Culture and the OED

Abstract

Among the 1,478 Oxford English Dictionary entries that cite works by Mary Elizabeth Braddon we find multiple words that pertain to the language of commodity and material culture. This paper investigates Braddon's engagement with the rapidly evolving material culture of the Victorian middle class consumer through her use and coinage of language to describe that world. Braddon’s descriptive prowess in this arena has been noted in her lush illustration of Lucy’s private rooms in Lady Audley’s Secret, but beyond this famous passage lie her original use of words like “top-hat,” “fashion magazine,” and “shoppiness” in works that are less widely read, such as Mount Royal, Vixen and Asphodel. The commodity words that are often “first in entry” or “first in sense” fall into three categories; those that describe dress, like “stylishly” or “chic;” those that describe accessories, like “gingham” meaning umbrella; or “in the fashion” and “honeymoon tour” in reference to the world of fashionable society. From the slang echoes of “towniness” to her later use of “beauty specialist” in our contemporary sense, Braddon performs for her reader the language of commodity and exchange, while critiquing the fetishistic nature of Fashion and Society.