Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850-1920 [Paperback]

The mythic status of the Oxbridge man at the height of the British Empire continues to persist in depictions of this small, elite world as an ideal of athleticism, intellectualism, tradition, and ritual. In his investigation of the origins of this myth, Paul R. Deslandes explores the everyday life of undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge to examine how they experienced manhood. He considers phenomena such as the dynamics of the junior common room, the competition of exams, and the social and athletic obligations of intercollegiate boat races to show how rituals, activities, relationships, and discourses all contributed to gender formation. Casting light on the lived experience of undergraduates, Oxbridge Men shows how an influential brand of British manliness was embraced, altered, and occasionally rejected as these students grew from boys into men.

Student life and masculine identity in England at the height of the Empire.

Paul R. Deslandes is Associate Professor of History at the University of Vermont.

'Oxbridge Men' is a substantial study of two very important British institutions that is augmented by its reading . . . against broader domestic and imperial concerns to show the resonances that existed between empire and nation . . . and Oxford and Cambridge . . . Most important, it is a significant achievement because it opens our eyes to the lived experience of Oxbridge undergraduates . . . making their way through the halls of these two important institutions . . . .Jan. 2006

Paul Deslandes has written a highly readable and informative book about the creation of an elite masculine culture at Oxford and Cambridge during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. . . Deslandes is fascinated by the way acceptance at one of the 'Oxbridge' colleges becomes a passport to elite status and cultural clout.2007

Deslandes's principal sourcesstudent magazines and periodicalscapture well the varsity ethos with its mingling of pomlSk