Women's fashion 1872 Dolly Varden clothing Charles Dickens color lithograph

Description

Women's fashions. Early 1870s sheet music titled Dolly Varden composed by Alfred Lee with words by Frank W. Green. Published in Philadelphia by Lee & Walker. The color cover illustration shows Dolly Varden in her colorful bonnet and dress, holding a bouquet of flowers, lithographed by T. Sinclair & Son in Philadelphia. Complete. Four separated sheets making 8 pages. Illustrated title-page back blank, 4 pages of music, blank page, last page lists other music published by Lee & Walker. Approximately 13 by 9.5 inches. Slight handling soiling to the title-page, small piece missing from the last page, otherwise in very good original condition. For details, please see the attached photos.
Dolly Varden was a girl character in the novel by Charles Dickens titled Barnaby Rudge notable for her flashy clothing, and in the early 1870s a Dolly Varden became a girl or woman wearing an ornate colorful floral hat and similar extravagant clothing. Songs like this one made fun of the excesses of this women's fashion vogue. The first verse begins: Oh! Have you seen my little girl? She doesn't wear a bonnet. She's got a monstrous flip-flop hat, with cherry ribbons on it, she dresses in bed furniture just like a flower garden". The Dolly Varden is also now the name of a species of colored trout found in the American west.