Books Set in the 1910s
Books Set in the 1910s
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Exploring the 1910s: A Glimpse Into a Transformative Decade
The 1910s were a time of profound change, blending both innovation and tradition. This decade, defined by elegance and resilience, set the foundation for modernity, with advancements in technology, fashion, culture, and social movements that continue to impact us today. Here’s a look back at some defining aspects of the 1910s.
1. Fashion Evolution and the Birth of Modern Style
The 1910s marked the rise of more functional, less restrictive clothing, influenced by pioneers like Coco Chanel, who introduced comfortable yet chic clothing that freed women from restrictive corsets. Loose blouses, ankle-length skirts, and practical suits were popular, creating a bridge between Victorian fashion and the flapper style that would dominate the 1920s.
The “hobble skirt,” narrow at the hem, was briefly popularized, showcasing a silhouette that drew attention to the legs, which was daring at the time.
2. Cultural Shifts and the Jazz Age
Though the Jazz Age is often associated with the 1920s, jazz music’s roots began to blossom in the 1910s. Musicians like Louis Armstrong began to make a name, setting the stage for a cultural revolution that would flourish in the next decade. Dance halls and theaters became gathering spots for young people embracing a new, more lively kind of music and dance.
3. Silent Films and the Rise of Hollywood
Hollywood gained momentum as the world’s film capital during the 1910s. Silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford became international icons, and going to the movies became a popular pastime. With no sound, films relied on exaggerated gestures and visual storytelling, enchanting audiences in ways that required no language barrier.
The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation highlighted the potential of film as a powerful (and, at times, controversial) medium, pushing the industry toward feature-length storytelling and setting new standards for cinematic technique.
4. Technological Advancements
The automobile, particularly the Model T, revolutionized transportation and became accessible to the average American. This spurred massive changes in mobility, infrastructure, and even urban development, as families began taking cross-country drives.
Airplanes, initially used for military purposes in WWI, captured the public's imagination. Charles Lindbergh’s famous solo flight was still over a decade away, but pioneers like the Wright brothers had already laid the groundwork for what would become the aviation age.
5. The Impact of World War I
World War I (1914-1918) was a defining event of the 1910s, influencing nearly every aspect of daily life. Men were drafted, and women stepped into roles previously reserved for men, working in factories and offices to support the war effort. This era marked the beginning of significant social shifts in gender roles and workforce dynamics.
The end of the war in 1918 brought a mixture of relief and sorrow, as families celebrated the return of loved ones while mourning those lost. This emotional wave would shape the 1920s, as people looked for new ways to celebrate life and move forward.
6. Social Movements and Progress
Women’s suffrage gained momentum throughout the 1910s, with women’s organizations, rallies, and demonstrations becoming increasingly common. In the United States, this advocacy culminated in the 19th Amendment’s ratification in 1920, granting women the right to vote and altering the landscape of American politics forever.
Labor movements also surged, as factory workers demanded better conditions and fair wages. Strikes were common, highlighting the struggles of the working class and sparking ongoing conversations about workers’ rights.
7. Home Life and Daily Routines
The 1910s brought modest improvements in household technology, with electric irons, washing machines, and early refrigerators becoming more common in homes, especially in urban areas. While rural life still relied heavily on manual labor, these appliances hinted at a future of increased convenience.
Radio was just emerging, though it hadn’t yet become the household staple it would be in the 1920s and 1930s. Families gathered around pianos or phonographs for entertainment, enjoying songs from vaudeville shows or orchestras.
The Lasting Legacy of the 1910s
Looking back, the 1910s were marked by resilience and adaptability. This decade bridged the old world and the new, paving the way for modern social norms, technological convenience, and cultural expression.
As we revisit the styles, music, and icons of this time, the 1910s remind us of how far we’ve come and the transformations that shaped today’s world. The lessons in resilience, unity, and progress remain as relevant as ever.
The 1910s may seem distant, but in many ways, they set the stage for the 20th century. Recalling this transformative time helps us appreciate how the past molds the future—and how each generation leaves its indelible mark.
The Star of Camp Greene by Joy Callaway
Author Interview with Joy Callaway
Based on the life of the woman whose wartime performances inspired the start of the USO.
Charlotte, NC. 1918. Broadway darling Calla Connolly had it all: a rising career on the stage and a loving fiancé, a fellow stage actor. But after his tragic death early in the war, Calla is touring the American training camps, hoping to convince General Pershing to let her tour the French front to cheer the men and honor her fiancé's memory. But her hopes are dashed when she contracts Spanish flu while performing at Camp Greene.
While convalescing, Calla inadvertently overhears a sensitive Army secret and is ordered to remain at Camp Greene for the duration of the war while her former mentor and rival steals her tour out from under her. Having no choice but to stay at the camp, she becomes the resident performer and forms attachments to several musician soldiers.
When she falls in love with the man responsible for trapping her at camp, the mission she's sworn to keep secret threatens the men she's come to care for. Calla is forced to decide what her dreams are worth--and if the future she never expected might only be possible if she lets those dreams go.
Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray
Author Interview with Victoria Christopher Murray
In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all.
W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart. Amidst rumors of their tumultuous affair, Jessie is determined to prove herself. She attacks the challenge of discovering young writers with fervor, finding sixteen-year-old Countee Cullen, seventeen-year-old Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen, who becomes one of her best friends. Under Jessie’s leadership, The Crisis thrives…every African American writer in the country wants their work published there.
When her first novel is released to great acclaim, it’s clear that Jessie is at the heart of a renaissance in Black music, theater, and the arts. She has shaped a generation of literary legends, but as she strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success.
The Liberty Scarf by Aimie K. Runyan, J’nell Ciesielski, Rachel McMillan
Author Interview with Aimie K. Runyan
Bookish Buys inspired by The Liberty Scarf by Aimie K. Runyan, J’nell Ciesielski, Rachel McMillan
In the midst of a seemingly endless war, a scarf connects three women in the cold winter of 1917 . . .
London: As an ambitious scarf maker, Iris Braxton spends her days surrounded by color and luxury not often seen during the dark days of war that promised to be over by Christmas. That promise has come and gone for three years with still no end in sight and her days continue in a monotony of rations and threads while she spins a dream of becoming Liberty's first female pattern designer. She hasn't the time or interest in rakish soldiers, but the temporarily-on-leave Captain Rex Conrad is persistent--and before long his charm wins her over. But war is cruel and all too soon Conrad leaves once more for the Front, but not before vowing to meet again in Strasbourg, France, the most magical of Christmas cities. Iris begins stitching small messages into each of the scarves she makes in hopes that one will find a way into Rex's hands to let him know she's thinking of him. And when she receives word that he's wounded in Strasbourg, she rushes to his side. Along the way, she passes a woman wearing one of her scarves . . .
Maine: Geneviève Tremblay, a French-Canadian immigrant, is a telephone operator living in Lewiston, Maine. Her beau is a member of a prominent family who has helped to Americanize her in a community often unfriendly to Canadians. As part of this effort, she enlists in the US Army Signal Corps to serve as a bi-lingual operator. Along the way, she meets a French officer who makes her question whether losing her identity is too heavy a price for acceptance.
Belgium: Clara Janssens, a Flemish Nurse, and Roman Allaire, an Alsatian violinist, connect in a Brussels palace-turned-hospital far beyond their routine provincial and countryside lives—and the expectations in those towns. Their love of music creates a spark between them, but the destruction of battle and the transient nature of their relationship threatens the bond they have built. Still, the appearance of a kind stranger and the unexpected gift of a treasured scarf bind them long beyond their stolen moments and offer them a future brighter than they could have even hoped.
Precipice by Robert Harris
London- 1914 —A suspicious double drowning on a party boat hosting the “Coterie,” a group of the brightest and most interesting of England’s young upper class….A real life clandestine affair between Prime Minister H.H. Asquith and the lovely Venetia Stanley, a young socialite over half his age….Europe on the brink of a world war…England and Ireland a powder keg….And a newly minted intelligence officer with Scotland Yard assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. What was merely a sexual intrigue has become a matter of national security that could alter the course of political history. These are the plotlines of Robert Harris’s propulsive new novel PRECIPICE which might be his best book yet.
The Winged Tiara by J'nell Ciesielski
November 12, 1918. It was a match made in champagne-soaked heaven, but all too soon the bubbles dried up, and Esme Fox awakens the morning after celebrating the end of the Great War to find herself shockingly and accidentally married. She gathers her belongings and slips out before her new husband can stop her. After all, she knows it's best to leave before he does.
Four years later, Jasper Truitt, after having made a name for himself in the underground world of jewel thieves, is on the hunt for a valuable heirloom: a one-of-a-kind winged tiara--the last Valkyrie tiara ever created. So it's with great surprise that he discovers it at a charity event atop the head of a woman he's never forgotten. His long-lost wife . . . who happens to be pursuing the tiara for a vengeful opera diva desperate to obtain the jewel for herself.
The reunion is cut short when Esme vanishes--again--but their separation is temporary. With a hitman on their heels and a deadline looming, the pair find themselves in an epic game of cat and mouse across Europe following leads from the French Riviera to a shop of wonders in Venice, a fairy-tale castle in Bavaria, and a veritable circus thrown by a champagne heiress, all before a dramatic horseback flight through the French countryside.
In the end only one can win, and with both of their hearts on the line, the winner may well turn out to be the loser.
In her latest glamorous historical romance, J'nell Ciesielski spins a sparkling story filled with her signature snappy dialogue and vivid atmosphere that will keep you reading late into the night to see what happens next.
What the Mountains Remember by Joy Callaway
At this wondrous resort, secrets can easily be hidden in plain sight when the eye is trained on beauty.
April 1913—Belle Newbold hasn’t seen mountains for seven years—since her father died in a mining accident and her mother married gasoline magnate, Shipley Newbold. But when her stepfather’s business acquaintance, Henry Ford, invites the family on one of his famous Vagabonds camping tours, she is forced to face the hills once again—primarily in order to reunite with her future fiancé, owner of the land the Vagabonds are using for their campsite, a man she’s only met once before. It is a veritable arranged marriage, but she prefers it that way. Belle isn’t interested in love. She only wants a simple life—a family of her own and the stability of a wealthy man’s pockets. That’s what Worth Delafield has promised to give her and it’s worth facing the mountains again, the reminder of the past, and her poverty, to secure her future.
But when the Vagabonds group is invited to tour the unfinished Grove Park Inn and Belle is unexpectedly thrust into a role researching and writing about the building of the inn—a construction the locals are calling The Eighth Wonder of the World—she quickly realizes that these mountains are no different from the ones she once called home. As Belle peels back the facade of Grove Park Inn, of Worth, of the society she’s come to claim as her own, and the truth of her heart, she begins to see that perhaps her part in Grove Park’s story isn’t a coincidence after all. Perhaps it is only by watching a wonder rise from ordinary hands and mountain stone that she can finally find the strength to piece together the long-destroyed path toward who she was meant to be.
International bestselling author Joy Callaway returns with a story of the ordinary people behind extraordinary beauty—and the question of who gets to tell their stories.
Aednan by Linnea Axelsson
Also listed in Books Set in the 1970s
The winner of Sweden’s most prestigious literary award makes her American debut with an epic, multigenerational novel-in-verse about two Sámi families and their quest to stay together across a century of migration, violence, and colonial trauma.
In Northern Sámi, the word Ædnan means the land, the earth, and my mother. These are all crucial forces within the lives of the Indigenous families that animate this groundbreaking book: an astonishing verse novel that chronicles a hundred years of change: a book that will one day stand alongside Halldór Laxness’s Independent People and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter as an essential Scandinavian epic.
The tale begins in the 1910s, as Ristin and her family migrate their herd of reindeer to summer grounds. Along the way, forced to separate due to the newly formed border between Sweden and Norway, Ristin loses one of her sons in the aftermath of an accident, a grief that will ripple across the rest of the book. In the wake of this tragedy, Ristin struggles to manage what’s left of her family and her community.
In the 1970s, Lise, as part of a new generation of Sámi grappling with questions of identity and inheritance, reflects on her traumatic childhood, when she was forced to leave her parents and was placed in a Nomad School to be stripped of the language of her ancestors. Finally, in the 2010s we meet Lise’s daughter, Sandra, an embodiment of Indigenous resilience, an activist fighting for reparations in a highly publicized land rights trial, in a time when the Sámi language is all but lost.
Weaving together the voices of half a dozen characters, from elders to young people unsure of their heritage, Axelsson has created a moving family saga around the consequences of colonial settlement. Ædnan is a powerful reminder of how durable language can be, even when it is borrowed, especially when it has to hold what no longer remains. “I was the weight / in the stone you brought / back from the coast // to place on / my grave,” one character says to another from beyond the grave. “And I flew above / the boat calling / to you all: // There will be rain / there will be rain.”
The Bookbinder by Pip Williams
A young British woman working in a book bindery gets a chance to pursue knowledge and love when World War I upends her life—an exquisite novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese's Book Club pick The Dictionary of Lost Words
It is 1914, and as the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, women must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who live on a narrowboat in Oxford and work in the bindery at the university press.
Ambitious, intelligent Peggy has been told for most of her life that her job is to bind the books, not read them—but as she folds and gathers pages, her mind wanders to the opposite side of Walton Street, where the female students of Oxford’s Somerville College have a whole library at their fingertips. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has: to spend her days folding the pages of books in the company of the other bindery girls. She is extraordinary but vulnerable, and Peggy feels compelled to watch over her.
Then refugees arrive from the war-torn cities of Belgium, sending ripples through the Oxford community and the sisters’ lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can educate herself and use her intellect, not just her hands. But as war and illness reshape her world, her love for a Belgian soldier—and the responsibility that comes with it—threaten to hold her back.
The Bookbinder is a story about knowledge—who creates it, who can access it, and what truths get lost in the process. Much as she did in the international bestseller The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams thoughtfully explores another rarely seen slice of history through women’s eyes.
American Ending by Mary Kay Zuravleff
A woman growing up in a family of Russian immigrants in the 1910s seeks a thoroughly American life.
Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents, who are building a life in a Pennsylvania Appalachian town. This town, in the first decades of the 20th century, is filled with Russian transplants and a new church with a dome. Here, boys quit grade school for the coal mines and girls are married off at fourteen. The young pair up, give birth to more babies than they can feed, and make shaky starts in their new world. However, Yelena craves a different path. Will she find her happy American ending or will a dreaded Russian ending be her fate?
In this immersive novel, Zuravleff weaves Russian fairy tales and fables into a family saga within the storied American landscape. The challenges facing immigrants—and the fragility of citizenship—are just as unsettling and surprising today as they were 100 years ago. American Ending is a poignant reminder that everything that is happening in America has already happened.
The Seeing Garden: A Novel by Ginny Kubitz Moyer
Author Interview with Ginny Kubitz Moyer
It’s 1910, and Catherine Ogden is aching to live a creative and meaningful life. That’s not easy to do when her aunt and uncle—and all of New York society—consider a good marriage to be the pinnacle of feminine achievement. But when Catherine visits Oakview, the Northern California estate of handsome bachelor William Brandt, she thinks that it might be possible to satisfy her family’s hopes as well as her own. In that beautiful place, she finds the promise of a new start and the opportunity to use her artistic gifts in designing the garden. But as Catherine is drawn into William’s hidden life, as well as the secrets of his estate staff, she discovers that Oakview holds both more opportunity and more risk than she ever imagined. It will take all her courage—and the lessons of some shocking revelations from the past—to choose the path that leads to real freedom.
Full of rich period detail and complex characters, and set against an unforgettable backdrop, The Seeing Garden explores what it takes for a woman to discern the path to her most authentic life.
The Last Russian Doll by Kristen Loesch
THE LAST RUSSIAN DOLL (Berkley Hardcover; on sale March 14, 2023) is a saga about family and love, inspired by Russian literature and folklore, and told through the lens of three generations of women living at pivotal moments in Russian history.
In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land...
These are the words that came to shape Rosie’s life, the words at the beginning of the strange stories that her mother used to tell. Rosie’s own childhood now seems like fairytale to her – the days when she lived happily in Russia with her family, until the night that everything changed. Now, a decade later and studying at Oxford University, Rosie is intent on understanding the tragic past that she can’t seem to escape. What happened on that terrible night in Moscow, and why? After Rosie’s mother passes away, she journeys to Russia to uncover the mysteries that still haunt her, and to answer her burning questions -- what happened to her family, and why?
Upon her arrival in Moscow, Rosie uncovers more than she ever could have imagined – a family history spanning generations, tied together through cryptic stories. At the center is Tonya, a young noblewoman living in 1917 Russia on the brink of revolution, and the fateful love story that started it all…
Murder in Haxford by Rick Bleiweiss
A delightful day in 1910 at the Haxford Spring Fair turns horrifying and deadly when a balloonist plummets to the earth from the blue skies above. However unlikely, it's soon discovered that this unfortunate corpse was not done in by his precipitous plunge but instead from an arrow fatally lodged in his chest. Unraveling the twisted web of intrigue that took the man's life requires the expert skills of Haxford's brilliant and sartorially splendid Chief Inspector Pignon Scorbion.
But the quirky detective is not alone in this task. Aiding Scorbion in his dogged pursuit of truth and justice are his carefully chosen deputies: six quirky and unconventional thinkers from the town who meet regularly with Scorbion in Calvin Brown's barbershop to unmask ne'er-do-wells and solve local crimes. Since his move to the charming village, the enigmatic detective has also realized his growing dependence upon its bookshop's owner. Lovely and quick-witted Thelma Smith not only helps Pignon with his criminal cases, but she seems well on her way to unlocking the mysteries of his heart.
Not everyone in Haxford is so cooperative. Faustin Hardcastle from the Gazette is bound and determined to ruin the town's new officer of the law with slanderous news reports of failure and misconduct. And other residents of the picture-perfect village do not welcome the inspector's inquiring eye and expert nose for trouble. When they engage in decidedly un-quaint activities like gambling, revenge, forgery, and loan sharking, it falls to Pignon Scorbion to reveal their deceit and criminal misdeeds -- all in a good day's work. Once done, he and Thelma can then thoroughly enjoy a delicious dinner at the Bridgehouse Inn.
Terra Nova by Henriette Lazaridis
The year is 1910, and two Antarctic explorers, Watts and Heywoud, are racing to the South Pole. Back in London, Viola, a photo-journalist, harbors love for them both. In Terra Nova, Henriette Lazaridis seamlessly ushers the reader back and forth between the austere, forbidding, yet intoxicating polar landscape of Antarctica to the bustle of early twentieth century London.
Though anxious for both men, Viola has little time to pine. She is photographing hunger strikers in the suffrage movement, capturing the female nude in challenging and politically powerful ways. As she comes into her own as an artist, she's eager for recognition and to fulfill her ambitions. And then the men return, eager to share news of their triumph.
But in her darkroom, Viola discovers a lie. Watts and Heywoud have doctored their photos of the Pole to fake their success. Viola must now decide whether to betray her husband and her lover, or keep their secret and use their fame to help her persue her artistic ambitions.
‘Til All Things Be Done by Suzanne Moyers
When her mother dies from Influenza and her beloved father mysteriously vanishes in 1919, Leola Rideout has little time to ask why; it’s all she can do to survive and keep her sisters together and safe. But decades later, as Papa reappears in haunting visions towards the end of her life, Leola summons the courage to finally confront her deepest grief, leading to an astonishing discovery about her family—and the complicated truth about her father—that might bring peace, at last. Moving between Leola’s teen years in a Texas orphanage and her senior years in New Jersey, ‘Til All Things Be Done is a multi-layered story about family betrayal and bonds perfect for fans of The Orphan Train and Where the Lost Wander.
Winter's Reckoning: A Novel by Adele Holmes, M.D.
Author Interview with Adele Holmes
Forty-six-year-old Madeline Fairbanks has no use for ideas like “separation of the races” or “men as the superior sex.” There are many in her dying Southern Appalachian town who are upset by her socially progressive views, but for years—partly due to her late husband’s still-powerful influence, and partly due to her skill as a healer in a remote town with no doctor of its own—folks have been willing to turn a blind eye to her “transgressions.” Even Maddie’s decision to take on a Black apprentice, Ren Morgan, goes largely unchallenged by her white neighbors, though it’s certainly grumbled about. But when a charismatic and power-hungry new reverend blows into town in 1917 and begins to preach about the importance of racial segregation, the long-idle local KKK chapter fires back into action—and places Maddie and her friends in Jamesville’s Black community squarely in their sights. Maddie had better stop intermingling with Black folks, discontinue her herbalistic “witchcraft,” and leave town immediately, they threaten, or they’ll lynch Ren’s father, Daniel. Faced with this decision, Maddie is terrified . . . and torn. Will she bow to their demands and walk away—or will she fight to keep the home she’s built in Jamesville and protect the future of the people she loves, both Black and white?
Midnight on the Marne by Sarah Adlakha
France, 1918. Nurse Marcelle Fournier has important secrets to keep. Her role as a spy has made her both feared and revered, but it has also put her in extreme danger from the approaching German army.
American soldier George Mountcastle feels an instant connection to the young nurse. But in times of war, love must wait. Soon, George and his best friend Philip are fighting for their lives during the Second Battle of the Marne, where George prevents Philip from a daring act that might have won the battle at the cost of his own life.
On the run from a victorious Germany, George and Marcelle begin a new life with Philip and Marcelle’s twin sister, Rosalie, in a brutally occupied France. Together, this self-made family navigates oppression, near starvation, and unfathomable loss, finding love and joy in unexpected moments.
Years pass, and tragedy strikes, sending George on a course that could change the past and rewrite history. Playing with time is a tricky thing. If he chooses to alter history, he will surely change his own future―and perhaps not for the better.
The Last Mona Lisa by Jonathan Santlofer
A gripping novel exploring the Mona Lisa’s very real theft in 1911 and the present underbelly of the art world, The Last Mona Lisa is a suspenseful tale, tapping into our universal fascination with da Vinci’s enigma, why people are driven to possess certain works of art, and our fascination with the authentic and the fake.
Lost Love's Return by Alfred Nicols
In 1918, in a dramatic battlefield scene on the Western Front, young American soldier Peter Montgomery sustains a severe wound. He's transported to a British hospital, where he falls hard for Elizabeth, a young English nurse, and she for him. Upon his release, they engage in an intense love affair, forever changing both of their lives. Separated and shipped home, Peter tries desperately to reconnect with Elizabeth, but the War and the Spanish flu epidemic have the world in turmoil. Despite his every effort, desperate and in great distress, he is unable to reconnect with her. And then, suddenly, all hope is gone. For the next twenty-seven years, Peter stoically meets many challenges in his life: finding a way to make a living during the Depression; being a devoted father to his son, born eleven months after marriage to a woman he does not love.
Unsettled Shores by Kelsey Gietl
Author Interview with Kelsey Gietl
Unsettled Shores transports readers from 1917 New York to air-raided London to occupied France, combining historical and literary elements within the inspirational story of an underground letter delivery organization during the Great War. It is about love and redemption and discovering that sometimes the most difficult battles we wage are the ones fought within ourselves.
From Ashes to Song by Hilary Hauck
It’s 1911 in Italy, and Pietro’s life on the family vineyard is idyllic. He has at last captured the melody of the grape harvest on his clarinet and can’t wait to share his composition with his grandfather, but before he can play, news arrives of a deadly disease sweeping the countryside. They have no choice but to burn the vineyard to stop its spread. The loss is too much for Pietro’s grandfather, and by morning, Pietro has lost two of the most precious things in his life—his grandfather and the vineyard. Adrift with grief, Pietro seeks a new start in America. He goes to work in a Pennsylvania coal mine where his musician’s hands blister and his days are spent in the muffled silence of underground. When the beautiful voice and gentle heart of a friend’s wife stirs a new song in him, Pietro at last encounters a glimmer of hope. From a respectful distance and without drawing the attention of her husband, Pietro draws on Assunta for inspiration and soon his gift for music returns. But when grief strikes in Assunta’s life, Pietro is to blame. When Prohibition steals Pietro’s last pleasure, he has to do something before Assunta’s grief consumes them both. Inspired by true events, From Ashes to Song is a story of unconventional love, hope, and the extraordinary gifts brought to America by ordinary people in the great wave of immigration.
Fashion in the 1910s
Fashion in the 1910s marked a transitional period, bridging the structured, formal styles of the Edwardian era with the looser, more modern silhouettes that would define the 1920s. Women's fashion saw significant changes as the influence of social movements, World War I, and new ideas around comfort and functionality reshaped the way people dressed. Here’s a look at some of the defining aspects of 1910s fashion:
1. The Decline of the Corset
Early in the decade, corsets were still widely worn, but their design changed to allow more freedom of movement. Corsets became longer and straighter, emphasizing a natural waist rather than the tight, hourglass shape of previous decades.
By the latter part of the decade, corsets started to fall out of favor, thanks in part to designers like Paul Poiret, who introduced flowing, loose-fitting garments and encouraged women to embrace a more natural silhouette.
2. The Hobble Skirt
Popular in the early 1910s, the hobble skirt was narrow at the hem, creating a “hobbling” effect that restricted movement. This daring style, often falling to the ankles, was made famous by French designers like Poiret. However, its limited practicality and discomfort meant it didn’t stay popular for long.
3. Rising Hemlines and Practical Dresses
As World War I reshaped society, women’s roles and clothing became more practical. Hemlines began to rise, reaching above the ankle by the end of the decade—a significant shift at the time.
Dresses featured simpler cuts and designs, allowing for ease of movement. Many women took on work traditionally reserved for men, so they needed clothing that allowed them to be more active, leading to the popularity of shirtwaist dresses, simpler blouses, and tailored suits.
4. The Influence of the War on Women’s Fashion
During WWI, with resources redirected to the war effort, materials like fabric and dyes were rationed, resulting in simpler, less extravagant clothing.
Functional details like large pockets, belts, and epaulets became popular, inspired by military uniforms. Women’s clothes featured fewer embellishments, focusing instead on clean lines and practical styles.
5. Eveningwear and the Influence of Ballets Russes
Despite the simpler daywear, evening fashion was still elaborate. Luxurious fabrics like silk and velvet were common in evening gowns, though these dresses were now more fluid and less restrictive.
The Ballets Russes, a Russian ballet company that gained international fame, influenced fashion with its exotic costumes and vivid colors, leading to a fascination with Orientalism in fashion. Designers incorporated bold colors, rich fabrics, and Eastern-inspired details like draping and tunics.
6. The Introduction of the Bra
In 1914, Mary Phelps Jacob patented the first modern bra, which became popular during the war when corsets were in shorter supply. This innovation gradually replaced the corset as a supportive undergarment, allowing women greater comfort and freedom of movement.
7. Men’s Fashion in the 1910s
Men’s fashion in the 1910s was characterized by tailored suits, though they became slightly more relaxed over the decade. Sack suits, with loose-fitting jackets and straight-legged trousers, were common.
During the war, men’s civilian fashion was influenced by military style. Trench coats, initially designed for British officers, became popular civilian outerwear and remain a classic style today.
8. Accessories and Hats
Hats were an essential part of a woman’s wardrobe. Early in the decade, wide-brimmed hats adorned with feathers and ribbons were popular. Later, hats became smaller and more practical, often featuring simple decorations.
Accessories like gloves, parasols, and handbags were also important, adding elegance and personal flair to simpler wartime outfits.
The Legacy of 1910s Fashion
By the end of the 1910s, fashion was irrevocably changed. Women embraced simpler, more practical clothing that allowed for movement and independence. The groundwork for 1920s fashion was set, with the corset almost entirely replaced and the modern silhouette beginning to take shape.
The shift toward more functional fashion mirrored broader changes in society, as women entered the workforce in greater numbers and embraced new freedoms that would influence the roaring 1920s.
