A Tale of Two Hittys begins in the year 1868. During the era, little girls wore bloomers, petticoats, a chemise (loose cotton undershirt), stockings and boots with buttons or laces. Depending on the age of the child, she might have to wear a corset. The dresses were often elaborate with lots of trimmings. For outerwear a little girl needed a coat, and the coat of choice was a paletot (pronounced “pal-uh-toe”). The paletot was a woman’s or girl’s jacket, usually worn over a skirt with a crinoline or bustle. Now, if you remember in the book, Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, Rachel Field describes Hitty’s Dickens outfit: “the watered-silk dress…
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Meet Kitty
Anyone familiar with the real Hitty doll knows that she has a wooden body with feet carved like boots and painted black. No one knows exactly where or when she was carved, but some people claim that dolls with similar boots have been found and dated to the mid-19th century, not 1827, when she is supposedly carved in the book Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, by a traveling peddlar. I believe this may upset some die-hard book lovers. However, for me it is simply a fascinating mystery! In 2021, I purchased a small doll on ebay. She is only 6″ tall. She has a shoulderhead (meaning the head, neck and…
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Who is Hitty?
I first read Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field when I was a teenager, and I still have the somewhat battered hardcover copy which I purchased used for $1. The edition was printed in October, 1943, and it had the colored frontispiece of Hitty sitting for her daguerreotype, illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop. I remember thinking at the time that it was a really good story, and as a young doll collector, I would have loved to have my own Hitty doll. But few people were making Hitty dolls at that time. Above: photo of the real Hitty in the Stockbridge Library Museum in 2024 (courtesy of Beth…
