In nineteenth-century London, a clubbable man was a fortunate man, indeed. The Reform, the Athenaeum, the Travellers, the Carlton, the United Service are just a few of the gentlemen\u2019s clubs that formed the exclusive preserve known as \u201cclubland\u201d in Victorian London\u2014the City of Clubs that arose during the Golden Age of Clubs. Why were these associations for men only such a powerful emergent institution in nineteenth-century London? Distinctly British, how did these single-sex clubs help fashion men, foster a culture of manliness, and assist in the project of nation building? What can elite male affiliative culture tell us about nineteenth-century Britishness?<\/p>\nA Room of His Own<\/i> sheds light on the mysterious ways of male associational culture as it examines such topics as fraternity, sophistication, nostalgia, social capital, celebrity, gossip, and male professionalism. The story of clubland (and the literature it generated) begins with Britain\u2019s military heroes home from the Napoleonic campaign and quickly turns to Dickens\u2019s and Thackeray\u2019s acrimonious Garrick Club Affair. It takes us to Richard Burton\u2019s curious Cannibal Club and Winston Churchill\u2019s The Other Club; it goes underground to consider Uranian desire and Oscar Wilde\u2019s clubbing and resurfaces to examine the problematics of belonging in Trollope\u2019s novels. The trespass of French socialist Flora Tristan, who cross-dressed her way into the clubs of Pall Mall, provides a brief interlude. London\u2019s clubland\u2014this all-important room of his own<\/i>\u2014comes to life as Barbara Black explores the literary representations of clubland and the important social and cultural work that this urban site enacts. Our present-day culture of connectivity owes much to nineteenth-century sociability and Victorian networks; clubland reveals to us our own enduring desire to belong, to construct imagined communities, and to affiliate with like-minded comrades.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThis splendid book boldly lifts the curtain and raises the sash of Victorian private gentlemen\u2019s clubs, which often were more comfortable, intimate, and yet sociable than the prized domestic hearth. According to Professor Black, clubs functioned as heterotopic spaces that were simultaneously apart from and part of the social fabric that constituted them. This is a beautifully conceived, thoroughly researched, and deftly argued book that expands our awareness of the homosocial associations out of which personal and national identities were forged in the nineteenth century and persist, with modifications and adjustments, even today.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\nKaren S. Chase Levenson \u2014 Linden Kent Memorial Professor of English, University of Virginia<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cBarbara Black\u2019s wonderfully informative discussion of nineteenth-century London club culture is something of a revelation. She makes us see how significant were men\u2019s clubs in the social life of the expanding propertied classes of Britain; how ubiquitous, if critically overlooked, are their representations in the Victorian novel and the Victorian press; and how powerfully the sociability they fostered has shaped notions of English masculinity and national identity. That she does so in prose that is itself sociable\u2014often witty and always appealing\u2014is an added pleasure.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\nEileen Gillooly \u2014 Associate Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities and Associate Faculty in English, Columbia University<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Purchase from Ohio University Press \u2022 Swallow Press<\/a>. <\/span><\/o:p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Barbara Black In nineteenth-century London, a clubbable man was a fortunate man, indeed. The Reform, the Athenaeum, the Travellers, the Carlton, the United Service are just a few of the gentlemen\u2019s clubs that formed the exclusive preserve known as \u201cclubland\u201d in Victorian London\u2014the City of Clubs that arose during the Golden Age of Clubs. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[497],"tags":[495],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/navsa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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