Originally published in 1991. Focusing on ‘boys' own’ literature, this book examines the reasons why such a distinct type of combative masculinity developed during the heyday of the British Empire. This book reveals the motives that produced this obsessive focus on boyhood. In Victorian Britain many kinds of writing, from the popular juvenile weeklies to parliamentary reports, celebrated boys of all classes as the heroes of their day. Fighting fit, morally upright, and proudly patriotic - these adventurous young men were set forth on imperial missions, civilizing a savage world. Such noble heroes included the strapping lads who brought an end to cannibalism on Ballantyne's "Coral Island" who came into their own in the highly respectable "Boys' Own Paper", and who eventually grew up into the men of Haggard's romances, advancing into the Dark Continent. The author here demonstrates why these young heroes have enjoyed a lasting appeal to readers of children's classics by Stevenson, Kipling and Henty, among many others. He shows why the political intent of many of these stories has been obscured by traditional literary criticism, a form of criticism itself moulded by ideals of empire and ‘Englishness’. Throughout, imperial boyhood is related to wide-ranging debates about culture, literacy, realism and romance. This is a book of interest to students of literature, social history and education.

From the contents: Laurie KAPLAN: How funny I must look with my breeches pulled down to my knees: nurses' memoirs and autobiographies from the Great war. - Peter BUITENHUIS: The perversion of motherhood: the trope of the son at the front. - Renate PETERS: The metamorphoses of Judith in literature and art: war by other means. - Lorrie GOLDENSOHN: Towards a non-combatant war poetry: Jarrell, Moore, Bishop.

Exploring how English masculinity - that was so contingent on the relative health of the British imperial project - negotiated the decline and ultimate dissolution of the empire by the middle of the twentieth century, this book argues that by defining itself in relation to indigenous masculinity, English masculinity began to share a common idiom with its colonial other. The rhetoric of indigenous masculinity, therefore, both mimicked and departed from its metropolitan counterpart. The study combines an interdisciplinary approach with a focus that is not limited to a single colonial society but ranges from colonial Bengal, Burma, Borneo and finally to colonial Australia.

The first encyclopedia to analyze, summarize, and explain the complexities of men's lives and the idea of modern manhood. The process of "making masculinity visible" has been going on for over two decades and has produced a prodigious and interesting body of work. But until now the subject has had no authoritative reference source. Men & Masculinities, a pioneering two-volume work, corrects the oversight by summarizing the latest historical, biological, cross-cultural, psychological, and sociological research on the subject. It also looks at literature, art, and music from a gender perspective. The contributors are experts in their specialties and their work is directed, organized, and coedited by one of the premier scholars in the field, Michael Kimmel. The coverage brings together for the first time considerable knowledge of men and manhood, focusing on such areas as sexual violence, intimacy, pornography, homophobia, sports, profeminist men, rituals, sexism, and many other important subjects. Clearly, this unique reference is a valuable guide to students, teachers, writers, policymakers, journalists, and others who seek a fuller understanding of gender in the United States.

In 1900, London was the capital of an empire that spanned the globe. This text examines the powerful city and its relationship with the British Empire at the turn of the century.

This book examines the imperial spectacles and startling reversals of fortune related in William H. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847), and investigates how these accounts inspired fictional adaptations by George A. Henty, H. Rider Haggard, and George Griffith. The revision of history in the Amerindian adventure both entertained young transatlantic audiences and was a vehicle to attract tourism and investment in countries such as Mexico and Peru. Henty, Haggard, and Griffith, moreover, used their tales of adventure as a platform to impart British values to their readers. Such values compel the characters and narrators of the novels discussed to act as cultural mediators, to acquire indigenous languages and adopt native ways of being, and, in several of the romance adventures under consideration, to marry Mexican or Incan noblewomen. Part I, Conquest, examines George Henty’s By Right of Conquest: Or, With Cortez in Mexico (1891), H. Rider Haggard’s Montezuma’s Daughter (1893), and George Griffith’s Virgin of the Sun: A Tale of the Conquest of Peru (1898). Part II, Reclamation, argues that English re-writings of history work to eclipse the Spanish in Haggard’s Virgin the Sun (1922), Henty’s Treasure of the Incas (1902) and Griffith’s Romance of Golden Star (1897).