Sharing the Stories
During the pandemic I began research armed with my curiosity about the city’s corset industry and a room full of city directories at the Worcester Historical Museum’s library. I started by looking for clues about a local female factory owner I had heard about. Digging for information about her life led me to discover the city’s dozens of other factories and sole proprietors in the corset industry. They deserved limelight, I thought. So I wrote a few profiles and created a website.
“This,” people started telling me, “should be a book.”
A Massachusetts publisher (TidePool Press, Cambridge MA) with strong Worcester ties expressed interest during those early days. They have pushed me to dig even deeper into the subject and to think more critically about the topic’s importance in broader terms. I spent most of the summer of 2023 addressing their copy editor’s comments, a list that stopped me in my tracks when it first arrived. After processing her input the story came into sharper focus, once rid of my previously excessive use of such words as “the,” “corset,” “Worcester,” etcetera (!). Another dive into the material at their request brought structure: three sections into which i have divided the book. Yet another dive (going on now) is bringing me deeper into the material by answering such questions as: “Any clue as to how long that trip to Harlem to SoHo would have taken?” and “Can you write a page JUST about this picture?”
Once I have addressed all the recent notes (there were many!) we will be closer to a finished product. This industrial history also has over two hundred illustrations which present a challenge to the production design team: how best to present the visuals as partner to the words. That work is underway now.
I keep telling myself, “it will be worth the wait!” Estimated time of arrival: 2025.
tHE book TOUR
May 18, 2024 2pm
Talk at the Blackstone River Valley Heritage Center | 3 Paul Clancy Way Worcester, MA, 01607 | (508) 373-7056
March 13, 2024 7pm
Book talk at the Shrewsbury Public Library
October 26, 2023, 5pm
Worcester Women’s History Project and the Worcester Historical Museum announced their new partnership at an event at the museum where Anne Marie read from several chapters of the book, shared images, answered questions.
https://www.wwhp.org/node/1628
October 18, 2023 6:30pm
Book talk at the Bigelow Free Public Library in Clinton, Massachusetts
https://bigelowlibrary.org/
September 29 , 2023 2pm
Book talk sponsored by the Langley-Adams Library in Groveland, Massachusetts held at Nichols Village auditorium
https://langleyadamslib.org/ | http://www.nichols-village.com/
April 28, 2023
Worcester Historical Museum newsletter April 2028 feature on National Tell a Story Day
“Read the recent story of one researcher, Anne Marie Murphy, and her efforts to tell the story of Worcester’s extensive corset industry. Read more in ‘Form, fit, and fortunes: Researcher unravels story of Worcester’s corset industry,’ in the current issue of Worcester MAGAZINE.”
April 19, 2023
“Form, fit, and fortunes: Researcher unravels story of Worcester’s corset industry”
Project featured in Worcester Magazine
https://www.worcestermag.com/
March 17, 2023
Interview with the Worcester Women’s Oral History Project, will appear at their website later this year.
https://www.wwohp.org
March 13, 2023
Visit to Clark University’s History 120 class Writing History which “introduces students to the discipline of history, with emphasis on the different types of historical writing and on the issues involved in the research and writing of historical studies.”
https://catalog.clarku.edu
October 26, 2022 5:30pm
TidePool Book Shop, Worcester Massachusetts.
Discussion and book signing with Phyllis Wong, author of We Kept Our Towns Going: The Gossard Girls of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Anne Marie Murphy, author of the forthcoming book City of Corsets.
https://www.tidepoolbookshop.com/event/
