Late Victorian aristocrats and the racial other: the Devonshire House ball of 1897

Abstract

The Devonshire House ball of 1897 was the last and most spectacular fancy dress ball held in the Victorian era. So far, discussions of the ball have almost exclusively focused on the list of illustrious guests and the costumes they wore. This article investigates for the first time the significance of those disguised as black servants or slaves who attended the ball not as guests in their own right but as attendants of three aristocratic ladies. As these attendants were from various ethnic backgrounds and belonged to different classes, their presence at the fancy dress ball sheds new light on late-Victorian notions of race and class in this particular field of entertainment.

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