The Button Box cover art

The Button Box

Lifting the Lid on Women's Lives

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Button Box

By: Lynn Knight
Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

I used to love the rattle and whoosh of my grandma's buttons as they scattered from their Quality Street tin.

An inlaid wooden chest the size of a shoe box holds Lynn Knight's button collection. A collection that has been passed down through three generations of women: a chunky '60s-era toggle from a favourite coat, three tiny pearl buttons from her mother's first dress after she was adopted as a baby, a jet button from a time of Victorian mourning. Each button tells a story.

'They change our view of the world and the world's view of us', said Virginia Woolf of clothes. The Button Box traces the story of women at home and in work from pre-First World War domesticity through the first clerical girls in silk blouses to the delights of beading and glamour in the '30s to short skirts and sexual liberation in the '60s.

©2016 Lynn Knight (P)2016 Random House AudioBooks 20th Century Art Gender Studies Historical Modern Social Sciences Women

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Embroidering Her Truth cover art
Patch Work cover art
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel cover art
The Housekeeper's Tale cover art
A Short History of the World According to Sheep cover art
Not the Whole Story cover art
Full Marks for Trying cover art
Women's Work cover art
Fashion Climbing cover art
Upstairs & Downstairs cover art
The Fabric of Civilization cover art
Terms and Conditions cover art
The Shop Girls cover art
Clothes...and Other Things That Matter cover art
Vivienne Westwood cover art
Etta Lemon cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
I shall be listening to this again it so much more than buttons. The history of women's lives across the generations is thought provoking, so much I'd not heard of but also reminders of things my mom and nan have told me. The outrageous expections that women through the years have had to put up with and yet much has not changed. Yes more women have top jobs but the idea of equality still has a long way to go.

Women's history

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
As a Seamstress myself, whom also played with my grandmothers button tin & my mothers, & weighing them out on my tiny postoffice scales, or transporting them in the trucks of my brothers hornby trains, i absolutly loved this book.

Fabulous Read bringing back childhood Memories

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, having being originally drawn to it because I have my own childhood memories of happily looking through my Grandma's button box. The book is a real treasure and I have already bought another copy to give to a friend: I know she too will love it.

A fascinating book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well read with an appropriate voice, but the writing & content aren't what I hoped for. It mixes women's social history with the author's personal family stories which is engaging in places... but unfortunately it quite often verges into a detailed list of "clothes I have owned, with information about where and when I brought them." These bits are still in the extreme, akin to listening to a stranger's shopping list. a good editor might have saved it, but alas!

A patchwork of pieces, some better than others

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I wasn’t sure how much traction there was in a ‘button box’ but Lynn Knight knows her stuff and made it such an interesting journey I’m so glad I listened. Well done. Well done on the narration too.

Flashbacks to childhood moments.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed this book. A historical count of women and fashion without being boring. The narrative takes you through the history of women who made and designed fashion and clothing. Taking you through the various decades.

A great book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Lots of interesting information and tidbits from years gone by, all centred around buttons and those who made the garments they were sewn on. I learned a great deal about how different levels of society behaved towards their clothing. Fascinating stuff.

Interesting and well researched

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I absolutely loved this book and listened to every chapter three times. VERY much enjoyed how it spills over with memories of every woman’s childhood, and a richly told social history of women’s lives through the past couple of centuries.

A beautiful, entrancing gem of a book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.