This book is a very valuable addition to the history of clothing in early modern England, which has seen a number of recent publications. The author’s approach is to focus on one county in particular, Sussex, and to examine the social difference in clothing worn by adults of both genders. It combines several different sources, but for wealthier individuals it mostly relies on individual case studies based on letters, diaries and accounts. These are Judith Morley, a wealthy widow living in Chichester off the rents of six hundred acres of land; Giles Moore, the rector of Horsted Keynes; Samuel Jeake, a merchant of Rye and his wife Elizabeth; the Roberts, a gentry family of Boarzell; and Richard Stapely, another member of the gentry. For those too poor to have left any sort of ego-document, Tankard has used coroners’ records that describe the clothing of the dead, clothing provided for the parish poor, testamentary records, and deposition evidence from court cases. There is also a chapter on literary constructions of ‘country’ clothing as opposed to ‘city’ clothing, and two chapters on the supply of clothing to the countryside, and the importance of London as a place where the wealthier residents of Sussex often shopped, either in person or by proxy. There is much information unearthed from letters instructing other family members to buy clothing. Especially valuable in this regard are letters concerning tailoring at a distance. Unsurprisingly, this was difficult, but the frustration of such seventeenth-century clients has provided us with much valuable information on the fit of clothes.

There are numerous other interesting practices that the book sheds light on. It is interesting that Giles Moore was growing his own hemp and flax to be made into linen, and having his own woollen socks knitted by local women in the 1660s and 1670s, just as Sarah Fell did in Yorkshire at the same time. This raises the interesting question of when linen production became more market-oriented. Other interesting information includes the fact that Giles Moore had detachable leather linings made for his woollen breaches. The book is likewise very good on the ranges of colour of clothes. Importantly it also shows that besides their everyday working clothes, poorer individuals recorded owing a good set of clothes, which, while of coarser fabric than those of their wealthier neighbours, were quite colourful.

Another great advantage of the book is that it goes into detail about how different pieces of clothing were put on by people, and how various assemblages of clothing worked together for both work and display. It is probably the best source to find out just how a seventeenth-century man or woman might have dressed themselves every day, and how it might have felt. Economic historians looking for more information on the cost of items and yearly expenditure will find more in the late Margaret Spufford’s and Susan Mee’s recent The Clothing of The Common Sort, 1570–1700 (Oxford, 2017), but as a source of information on how individuals bought, made and wore clothing in seventeenth-century England, this can be enthusiastically recommended as a first port of call.