The Dressmaker (Bainbridge novel) role. The Dressmaker (Bainbridge novel) The Dressmaker (US title The Secret Glass) is a gothic psychological novel written by Beryl Bainbridge. In 1973, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Like many of Bainbridge's earlier works, the novel is semi-autobiographical. In particular, the story was inspired by a relationship that she had with a soldier as a teenager. The characters of Nellie and Margo were based upon two of her paternal aunts. Set in Liverpool and Lancashire during World War II, a repressed dressmaker and her sister struggle looking after their 17-year-old niece, who is having a delusional affair with
The Dressmaker (Ham novel) intentionally use a country town based on her own experiences as she explained that "My experience in my home town was the absolute contrary (to Dungatar)." In the 1950s, Myrtle "Tilly" Dunnage returns to her hometown of Dungatar, an Australian country town, to take care of her ill mother, Molly. Molly had sent Tilly away at the age of ten because of false accusations of murder, after the death of fellow student Stewart Pettyman. Tilly, an expert dressmaker trained by Madeleine Vionnet in Paris, starts a dressmaking business and transforms the locals with her couture creations. Many of the townsfolk