Reference

Lending

I can't imagine working from most of these patterns. We are really spoiled by the quality of illustration that current needlework books have.

Crochet - I know that US and British terms are different, but these don't seem to match the British either. ( )

This is a facsimile edition, a copy of the original "Beeton's Book of Needlework" published in 1870 by Ward, Lock and Tyler. All the 600 illustrations and patterns are engravings, but they are very clear.

Although the cover states that it is "By Mrs Isabella Beeton, Author of the World Famous Book of Household Management", there is no evidence that she wrote this book; she had died in 1865. Then her publisher husband, Samuel Orchart Beeton, found himself in difficult financial circumstances and had to sell the rights to the Beeton name to another publisher and go to work for them. (He himself died in of tuberculosis in 1875.)

However the book is an excellent guide to the 'fancy work' fashionable among middle class ladies in the England of 1870. Here is a list of the contents:-

Tatting instructions
Tatting patterns
Embroidery instructions
Embroidery patterns
Crochet instructions
Crochet patterns
Knitting instructions
Netting instructions
Knitting and Netting patterns
Alphabets for Monograms and Initials
Point Lace Work
Point Lace instructions
Point Lace patterns
Instructions and patterns in Guipure d'Art
Berlin Work instructions