"Uniforms of the American Revolution" Topic

I'd like a decent book (because I'm old-fashioned) on uniforms of the American Revolution – both sides, and allies.
Doesn't have to be comprehensive, but giving a reasonable coverage.
Any suggestions?

Uniforms of the American Revolution
by John Mollo and Malcolm McGregor

I'll second coopman's suggestion.

An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Uniforms from 1775-1783 The American Revolutionary War, by Kevin F. Kiley and Digby Smith

Coopman: +3

Mollo & McGregor, most definitely. Some details have been questioned in the 40 years since it was first published but it is a fine starting point; beautifully illustrated and a good sense of period.

My go to books, each of which has passed the test of time.

Lefferts, Charles. Uniforms of the American, British, French, and German Armies in the War of the American Revolution 1775-1783.

Mollo, John and McGregor, Malcom. Uniforms of the American Revolution

Katcher, Phillip. Uniforms of the Continental Army.

Perfect choices, Mark. Three great books.

Mollo. It's comprehensive and very rarely "superseded by later research".
Plus it's cheap!

Thanks for the advice, everyone. Mollo it is!

TMP at it's best!

Mollo is probably the cheapest to get hold of.

Another good one IMO is "Soldiers of the American Revolution" by Stuart Reid. This combines 5 osprey books: the two on Washington's Army and the three on the British Army of the American Revolution.

Katcher's book mentioned above has been reprinted by On Military Matters and is available from them. It is all descriptive text, no purty color plates at all.

Some, if not all of Lefferts, is available on the internet at the California SAR website.

link

I like Kiley & Smith. I also like Mollo. I have one of the original 500 copies of Lefferts. I wish his paintings were a bit more definitive, as are Troianis. I also suggest the paintings of Don Troiani. He does his research very well.

Mark/23rd Fusilier's list is a good one for Continentals. Lefferts is good. I have it and use it. It was the first work that tried to go beyond what troops should be wearing and look at what they actually wore, based on deserter descriptions. Katcher is better because he builds on what Lefferts did and provides analysis. Mollo is good for pictures and is readily available. If I had to pick just one of the three I would go with Mollo.

My complaint with Mark's list is that it doesn't adequately cover the British, Loyalists and French, possibly the Germans too although I defer to others on that. Katcher did another book on the British, Loyalists and Germans, which I have. I don't feel it adequately covers the modifications the British made to uniforms in North America, or all the different uniforms issued to Loyalist units over the course of the war. For the French both Mollo and Lefferts seem to forget there was more to the French army in North America than Rochambeau's contingent.

Good news is that there is a good deal of decent quality information that can be mined for free from this forum.

If I could only have one book, it would be Mollo.

Since you asked for only one, there's your answer.

The uniform prints from The Company of Military Historians are excellent and only a selection are published in Military Uniforms in America, Volume I, edited by John Elting.

My one and only would be Mollo too.

Mollo

Lefferts needs to be used with some care as he gets some details wrong, such as the shape of collars.

No uniform book is perfect but some are better then others. It depends on what you are looking for. Mollo is a very reasonably priced widely available book that get more right then wrong. Especially considering its age. I think it is perfect for what we need it for; painting toy soldiers.

And yes Bill N I agree with your comments. You hit the nail on the head. There is a lot of very good research being done on the British uniforms which you can find only in scholarly journals or reenactor publications. How more recent publications can get the Guards battalions so very wrong when there is such outstanding research out there is a mystery to me. Loyalists are still uncharted territory with little out there if substance but a lot of miss infirmation. And the French and Germans? Still waiting…..

From a wise old British owl:

There is no one book on AWI uniforms – you need Mollo for the British, Germans and Loyalists, and Lefferts (or better still Katcher) for the Rebel forces, because Mollo is weak on the latter, relying too much on deserter reports (lost track of how many units in "peach" trousers I've seen on wargames tables), whilst Lefferts is weak on the former, ignoring almost all British "field mods" and focusing exclusively on official regulations. Rene Chartrand has a definitive Osprey on the French (more than good enough for wargamers). There has been more interest in the Spanish in the past few years, and Rene Chartrand has another good Osprey MAA on the Spanish forces in N America, but there are also two very good Spanish books (part of a series of Osprey-style books – Guerreros y Batallas – even if you don't speak Spanish the illustrations are worth the price) on the sieges of Gibraltar (#7) and Pensacola (#43). You need both because the uniforms in Europe and N America were quite different.

Mollo

Don Troiani

dontroiani.com/gallery.shtml

Company of Military Historians

link

Lefferts' illustrations are more than a little old-fashioned and some representations of the British soldiery are distinctly odd.