{"product_id":"fancy-work-unpicking-past-lives-9781804272374","title":"Fancy Work: Unpicking Past Lives","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlending biography, memoir and art criticism, Fancy Work: Unpicking Past Lives - the latest work from the author of Ill Feelings - explores the ever-shifting tensions between family, labour and gender through the history of embroidery, or 'fancy work'.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhat can a scrap of embroidery tell us about how to live? How can the past help us imagine unconstrained lives when not all traces remain?     \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo explore these questions, Alice Hattrick turns to the embroidery designer May Morris and her circle: from her father William Morris to her mother Jane, an artist's model and embroiderer herself, and M.F., May's gender non-conforming partner of twenty years. Through this queer encounter with the Arts and Crafts movement, Hattrick shifts attention away from celebrated designers and towards intimacy, labour and domestic life. Looking to May - alongside others who have found in textiles a means of resistance - Hattrick traces connections between these histories and their own queer identity, family ties and precarious working conditions within an ableist society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExpansive in thought, form and time, Fancy Work stitches together archival fragments, domestic spaces and contemporary sites of struggle, insisting on the political force of often overlooked acts of defiance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch4\u003eDetails\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003eISBN13: 9781804272374\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFormat: Paperback \/ softback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNumber of Pages: 320\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eEdition: \u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication Date: 22 Sep 2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication City, Country: London, United Kingdom\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDimensions (cm): 19.7(H)x12.5(L)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWeight (gm): \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch4\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h4\u003eAlice Hattrick is a writer and lecturer based in London. Ill Feelings, their non-fiction book on chronic illness, intimacy and mother-daughter relationships, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2021. Alice's criticism has been published in Art Review, frieze, The White Review and TANK, among other publications. They are the co-producer of Access Docs for Artists, made in collaboration with Leah Clements and the late Lizzy Rose, and teach at University of the Arts, London. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch4\u003eReviews\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘This illuminating, expansive and intricately connected book on embroidery made me giddy with the ideas and knowledge it reveals. In detailing so diligently the histories, practices and techniques of needlework, insights into craft as a whole open up. \u003cem\u003eFancy Work\u003c\/em\u003e shows how fluency in non-linguistic forms enriches language, sharpens political thought and articulates some of the most radical ways of living.’\u003cbr\u003e — Holly Pester, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Lodgers\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘There are so many layers to this book; every page left my mind brimming with detail, colour and affection. \u003cem\u003eFancy Work\u003c\/em\u003e somehow contains multitudes while remaining clear, intimate and curiously joyful. I knew at once it was a book I would treasure and return to.’\u003cbr\u003e — Sara Baume, author of \u003cem\u003eSeven Steeples\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘I loved this book. Alice Hattrick writes with luminous beauty about textile craft as a mode of resistance, and about the radically creative lives of artist May Morris and her partner MF. \u003cem\u003eFancy Work\u003c\/em\u003e presents a fascinating history of stitchwork as an embodied practice, from Gee’s Bend quilts stained with menstrual blood to the meticulous embroidery of nineteenth-century lunatic patients. This is a book about patience, repetition and generative unproductivity – about the human desire to make things and the loss inherent in all textiles. It is curious, smart, fierce and tender; I will be thinking about it for a long time.’\u003cbr\u003e — Maddie Ballard, author of \u003cem\u003eBound\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘The quaint stereotypes that surround embroidery cannot survive after this. Alice Hattrick’s intervention is not just a history of maligned “craft”, but a study into the imperialistic and misogynistic forces that have caused and perpetuated that derision. Fabric, it turns out, is infused with life. It is an overlooked witness to and participant in our collective story. You will be hooked.’\u003cbr\u003e — Nathalie Olah, author of \u003cem\u003eBad Taste\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘\u003cem\u003eFancy Work\u003c\/em\u003e is a queer stitching of time — a reclamation of living, of historical losses, of queer temporalities. But more than anything it is permission: to rework, to backstitch our own fancy work, to realize we are made of scraps.’\u003cbr\u003e — Tash Walker\u003cem\u003e, Bittersweet Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e‘Ill Feelings\u003c\/em\u003e is a deeply personal and deeply political reckoning with the nature of illness, inheritance, time, silence, bodies and invisibility. Alice Hattrick offers both a radical redefinition of the dominant narratives surrounding health and pain, and the knowledge we need in order to name, understand and resist them. Hattrick has found a voice and form which open up new and exciting possibilities for writing the self and making sense of the collective past: I read this remarkable book with outrage, fascination and immense admiration.’\u003cbr\u003e — Francesca Wade, author of \u003cem\u003eGertrude Stein: An Afterlife\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘I love the quality of attentiveness that Alice Hattrick brings to their poised and pointillistic exploration of the mysterious aetiologies and affects of chronic fatigue. They excel in listening out for echoes and whispers, their narrative of illness wriggling into uncomfortable places that medicine dismisses or ignores. Their book makes you pause to think – and rethink – page by page.’\u003cbr\u003e — Marina Benjamin, author of \u003cem\u003eInsomnia\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘\u003cem\u003eIll Feelings \u003c\/em\u003edefies neat conclusions as well as easy categorization of the book itself, so that attempting to describe it here seems like misdiagnosis, and to try and name the paradox at its heart seems like a betrayal of its rewards. But the thrill of Alice Hattrick’s writing stems from its struggle to be free of its constraints, communicating with unspooling fury the mutability of lived experience rather than presuming to define it. In doing so, they remind us that the undefined – our own ill feelings – reveals not weakness so much as our inherent capacity for resistance.’\u003cbr\u003e — Olivia Sudjic, author of \u003cem\u003eExposure\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘I read \u003cem\u003eIll Feelings\u003c\/em\u003e with a sense of wonder at the courage required not just to live with a medically unexplained illness, but to write about it with such descriptive clarity and probing intelligence. Alice Hattrick’s book is a powerful cure for ignorance or indifference about a complex form of suffering.’\u003cbr\u003e — Edmund Gordon, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Invention of Angela Carter\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘\u003cem\u003eIll Feelings\u003c\/em\u003e is a necessary, urgent book that I feel I have been waiting my whole life to read. A beautiful combination of memoir, reportage and razor-sharp analysis, it made me think very deeply and critically and feel powerfully understood all at once – a testament to what truly accomplished non-fiction writers can achieve. This book makes me excited for the future of literary non-fiction writing and its power to change the world and how we see it.’\u003cbr\u003e — Lucia Osborne-Crowley, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Lasting Harm\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘Hattrick’s ability to reflect life with ME in form and language is complex and brilliant. The structure of \u003cem\u003eIll Feelings\u003c\/em\u003e appears initially as haphazard, perhaps, but the more you read, the more it clarifies: this is not a book of simple narrative, of gradual progression.’\u003cbr\u003e — Connor Harrison, \u003cem\u003eReview 31 \u003c\/em\u003e(praise for \u003cem\u003eIll Feelings\u003c\/em\u003e)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘\u003cem\u003eIll Feelings\u003c\/em\u003e belongs on the shelf with Susan Sontag’s \u003cem\u003eIllness as Metaphor\u003c\/em\u003e, Ben Watt’s \u003cem\u003ePatient\u003c\/em\u003e, Anne Boyer’s \u003cem\u003eThe Undying\u003c\/em\u003e and Jenn Ashworth’s \u003cem\u003eNotes Made While Falling\u003c\/em\u003e, because, quite simply, it’s that good.’\u003cbr\u003e — Steven Long, \u003cem\u003eThe Crack Magazine\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘\u003cem\u003eIll Feelings \u003c\/em\u003eoffers spellbinding reality unlike anything I have ever read. It conquers the sense of grief that we have to learn to live with; this deep guttural fear in humanity is addressed compassionately.’\u003cbr\u003e — Billie Ingram-Sofokleous, \u003cem\u003eBuzz Magazine\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Alice Hattrick","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50574025916633,"sku":"9781804272374","price":34.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0502\/9530\/8441\/files\/9781804272374.jpg?v=1790774950","url":"https:\/\/www.arielbooks.com.au\/products\/fancy-work-unpicking-past-lives-9781804272374","provider":"Ariel","version":"1.0","type":"link"}