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Blum, Stella. Ackermann's Costume Plates: Women's Fashions in England, 1818-1828. New York: Dover, 1978.
Moore, Doris Langley. The Gallery of Fashion 1790-1822 from Plates by Heideloff and Ackermann with Introduction by Sacheverell Sitwell and Notes on the Plates by Doris Langley Moore. Batsford Colour Books. London: B.T. Batsford, 1949. (out of print)
A new (to me at least) website by Nils Devine, Ackermann's Royal Repository of Arts is going to be putting original text and plates online. I haven't yet been able to look at anything, but that may some problem with my online access.
The great Pemberley site has a fun ad from Ackermann's.
This page of Davidson Galleries "DAVIDSON GALLERIES - Thomas Rowlandson" is selling some Ackermann plates for $100 or $150 dollars (7/03), many dating from 1813.
Tara Maginnis's The Costumer's Manifesto has this page, "Ackerman's Costume Plates," just on Ackermann's fashion plates. I don't understand the inconsistent spelling of Ackermann, but The Costumer's Manifesto is one of those I have long admired and and felt that long ago surpassed my web efforts in range of images and being current and up-to-date.
Candice Hern's "Fashion Prints: Evening Dresses" has some images and information about Ackermann's Repository and other early periodicals. See also her "Fashion Prints: Walking Dresses 1813-1815" and "Fashion Prints: Walking Dresses 1806-1812." All of these three pages of Candice's feature original text from the Repository and Candice's own scans of her personal copies of Ackermann's plates. The color and detail is quite lovely.
The Regency Garderobe has some bonnet images from plates from the Repository. Sadly, this site has gone to frames, so I can no longer link directly to some of the subpages there. The page The Second Decade: Gowns has some images from the journal and a nice essay on gowns. This Bonnets: A Timeline page also has some images and good information.
This page "The Domestic Landscape, 1860-1960" at the University of Glasgow, shows three of the library's ninety plates of furniture published in Ackermannn's Repository, 1811-1828.
Case Antiques' "Antique Prints for Sale" currently has some 1808 and 1809 plates for sale for $145 (4/23/4).
A complete run of Ackermann's is for sale for 28,500 British pounds (4/23/4) at this "Rare Books" page.
"Fashion Plates 1800-1840" features a number of beautiful color scans of Ackermann's fashion plates
Dr. Michael Hancher's "Victorian Studies: Illustrated Periodicals, Selected Bibliography" has an entire subsection on Ackermann's.
Stella Blum writes that the "Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics, commonly known as Ackermann's Repository, after Rudolph Ackermann, its publisher .... first appeared in London in 1809 as a monthly publication. Although not primarily a fashion periodical, the pages it devoted to clothes were valid fashion plates since they were meant to inform the ladies of the latest styles and to serve as a dressmaker's guide. By the time it ceased operations in 1829, the magazine had included some 450 fashion prints" (Blum v).
In August of 1997, I went to Stanford University and examined some of their excellent copies of this journal. The fashion section is an extremely small portion of each issue. The plates of fashionable furniture are very interesting as well and often are much more elaborate than the fashion plates, even folding out into large-scale plates. Some volumes feature advertisements which are fascinating.
I have also been privileged on various occasions to examine Kathy Hammel's personal copies of this journal, which are in excellent shape. Some of the unique scans provided on this website are copyright to Kathy Hammel and reprinted with her permission. Back in 1998, Kathy and I planned to write a book on some of her plates in Ackermann's Repository. We drafted up a small portion of our planned tome, Regency Elegantés: British Women, Fashion, and Culture 1811-1815. We sent off one book proposal and never even got a letter of rejection. Much too easily discouraged and overworked, we let the project rot. Perhaps at some point, I can get permission from Kathy to publish what we wrote to date on the web. Our theory was that Ackermann's Repository was an important cultural document and an indirect way for women to participate in politics and culture via fashion.
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