Lifting the Lid on Women's Lives

The Button Box

The Story of Women in the 20th Century Told Through the Clothes They Wore

An ingenious tour of domestic and social history over the last century (Guardian) - the story of women in the twentieth century told through the clothes they wore

Knight explores her own family’s history and, in parallel, the intimate history of women in the 20th century… The politics of being a modern woman are revealed through changing fashions… In Knight’s hands, buttons – the humblest of everyday objects – become portals into the past, charting our progress along that road.

Charming book… Knight’s brilliant notion is to use the button box she inherited from her grandmother as a way of delving into the fabric, literal and metaphorical, of the women who wore them… A patchwork of memory, anecdote and deft quotation.

Inspired by her own shimmering box of toggles, clasps and buckles, Knight takes us on an ingenious tour of domestic and social history over the last century… From this core of very personal material, Knight writes more generally of ordinary women’s lives and changing prospects over three generations, of clothes as self-expression, as defiance, as entertainment, as evidence of frugality and frivolity all rolled into one.

The drama of women’s lives from the 19th to the mid-20th century was hidden in plain sight among the brightly coloured buttons that rattled so enticingly in [Knight’s] grandmother’s Quality Street tin… Fascinating social history.

An unusual and irresistibly delightful account of more than a century’s worth of women’s lives… This is a book to make you smile, a story luminous with nostalgia… Delicious gem of a book.

[Knight] quotes like a dream, cherry-picking bon mots from sources far, wide and delightful... There are plenty of curious and quirky details.

A sweeping look at how women’s clothing has developed as our place in society has evolved… A delight.

Broader social history is approached through the rich, vivid stories… These buttons…tell an intimate story of changing times.

Each trinket of the past comes to life, giving a nice nostalgic and informative look into the history of fashion, the Great War and even a few comical anecdotes on sex and relationships.

Lively trip through haberdashery history.

I found this a great read for all ages and a genuine insight into the social history of different times.

Knight is a lively minded writer… Knight trims her story with wonderful arcane clothes-related information.

If ever there was a case for book groups to abandon fiction… [This] is it… Irresistible.

If you spent many happy hours as a child messing about with buttons, you’ll love The Button Box

A box which contains the buttons of three generations of women in Lynn Knight’s family is at the centre of this book, and is both ordinary and remarkable, prosaic and magical… The only illustrations of the buttons and clothes in the book appear on the dust jacket and at the start of each chapter, yet through Knight’s prose we are able to vividly picture them and ourselves rummaging through an old button box, imagining the dresses and the lives that they once belonged to

Lynn Knight was born in Derbyshire and lives in London. The women of her family passed on many stories along with beaded bags and buttoned gauntlets, and fostered her interest in the texture and narratives of women's lives. She is the author of the biography Clarice Cliff (2005), a memoir, Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue: The Story of an Accidental Family (2011), and The Button Box: The story of women in the 20th century, told through the clothes they wore (2016). Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is her first novel.

A wooden box holds the buttons of three generations of women in Lynn Knight’s family – each one with its own tale to tell... 
 
Tracing the story of women at home and in work, from the jet buttons of Victorian mourning, to the short skirts of the 1960s, taking in suffragettes, bachelor girls, little dressmakers, Biba and the hankering for vintage, The Button Box lifts the lid on women’s lives and their clothes with elegance and wit.

Lynn Knight

Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is a joy of a read. A superbly researched story of post-WW1 female friendship chock-a-block with characters you’ll cheer on to the very last page, I read it cover to cover in a day

AJ Pearce, Sunday Times bestselling author of Dear Mrs Bird

The House of Eliott meets Miss Marple in Lynn Knight’s superb fiction debut. As well as being an exquisite mystery, Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is an ode to the pioneering women who embraced new opportunities in the aftermath of The Great War. I loved it!

Jessica Bull, author of Miss Austen Investigates

What’s more enthralling than women helping women — to reclaim fortunes, achieve justice, or get a worthy business off the ground? Rose Burnham is an admirable protagonist, full of courage, charm, talent, and empathy. I had the best time rooting for her every success. Lynn Knight has written a novel for everyone who’s ever cheered on a friend or sister. It’s suspenseful, enchanting, and uplifting: a pure delight.

Nina de Gramont, author of THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR

A seamless blend of elegance and drama, stitched together with exquisite skill . . . Phantom Thread meets Miss Marple

Orlando Murrin, author of KNIFE SKILLS FOR BEGINNERS

A hat box of delights, full of period detail and thoroughly enjoyable

Claire Wilcox, author of Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes, and Professor in Fashion Curation at the London College of Fashion

I thoroughly enjoyed this charming historical mystery and raced through it. Knight portrays the struggles of ‘surplus’ women in the 1920s convincingly, and the detailed description of threads, silks, and sewing techniques is, at times, exquisite

Delightful is the word. Women supporting women in sisterhood and friendship. A glorious glut of period details - how you will long for a cloche hat. A comforting, delicious buttered crumpet of a novel

Natasha Poliszcuk, Content Director of BookBrunch

Rose had the sense of a thread being pulled. One tug and everything could unravel. 
 
South-east London, 1925. 
 
Talented, ambitious designer-dressmaker Rose Burnham knows well both the strains of her profession and the secrets it can yield. Newly established in her own business, she and her sisters are privy to the hushed conversations that unspool behind the fitting room’s closed doors. 
 
So when a major client finds herself the victim of a deception, it is Rose she tells. Driven by the shortage of men following the Great War, Miss Holmes had engaged the services of a matrimonial agency, only to be cheated out of her inheritance by a fake suitor. 
 
Rose is determined to bring the swindler to justice. To begin with, playing the detective is a grand adventure, but as pressures mount and an old friend receives a troubling string of poison-pen letters, Rose discovers there is more to investigating – and these investigations – than she’d bargained for.

Lynn Knight

Praise for Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread

Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is a joy of a read. A superbly researched story of post-WW1 female friendship chock-a-block with characters you’ll cheer on to the very last page, I read it cover to cover in ...

The House of Eliott meets Miss Marple in Lynn Knight’s superb fiction debut. As well as being an exquisite mystery, Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is an ode to the pioneering women who embraced new ...

What’s more enthralling than women helping women — to reclaim fortunes, achieve justice, or get a worthy business off the ground? Rose Burnham is an admirable protagonist, full of courage, charm, talent, and empathy ...

Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is a joy of a read. A superbly researched story of post-WW1 female friendship chock-a-block with characters you’ll cheer on to the very last page, I read it cover to cover in ...

The House of Eliott meets Miss Marple in Lynn Knight’s superb fiction debut. As well as being an exquisite mystery, Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is an ode to the pioneering women who embraced new ...

What’s more enthralling than women helping women — to reclaim fortunes, achieve justice, or get a worthy business off the ground? Rose Burnham is an admirable protagonist, full of courage, charm, talent, and empathy ...

Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is a joy of a read. A superbly researched story of post-WW1 female friendship chock-a-block with characters you’ll cheer on to the very last page, I read it cover to cover in ...

The House of Eliott meets Miss Marple in Lynn Knight’s superb fiction debut. As well as being an exquisite mystery, Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread is an ode to the pioneering women who embraced new ...

What’s more enthralling than women helping women — to reclaim fortunes, achieve justice, or get a worthy business off the ground? Rose Burnham is an admirable protagonist, full of courage, charm, talent, and empathy ...

Books by Lynn Knight

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