Martial Masculinities: Experiencing and Imagining the Military in the Long Nineteenth Century

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This collection explores the role of martial masculinities in shaping nineteenth-century British culture and society in a period framed by two of the greatest wars the world had ever known.

It offers a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on an emerging field of study and draws on historical, literary, visual and musical sources to demonstrate the centrality of the military and its masculine dimensions in the shaping of Victorian and Edwardian personal and national identities. Focusing on both the experience of military service and its imaginative forms, it examines such topics as bodies and habits, families and domesticity, heroism and chivalry, religion and militarism, and youth and fantasy. This collection will be required reading for anyone interested in the cultures of war and masculinity in the long nineteenth century.

Reviews

'In a superbly written epilogue, Isaac Land offers a final synthesis of the chapters while presenting his own original research on cross-dressing women in uniform. [...] Ultimately, Martial Masculinities reminds us of the need to look beneath the homogenous surface presented by uniformed, drilled troops in the age of horse and musket. Moreover, it makes it clear that the influence of military gender ideals went far beyond those who donned a uniform.'
H-War

Author Bio

Michael Brown is Reader in History at the University of Roehampton

Anna Maria Barry is a Research Assistant at the Royal College of Music Museum

Joanne Begiato is Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University