Idler's Club

Humour and Mass Readership from Jerome K. Jerome to P. G. Wodehouse. Investigates whether a popular magazine can promote social mobility by joking about clubs. Investigates whether a popular magazine can promote social mobility by joking about clubsFocuses on Victorian humour, a subject that is undergoing a renaissancePrimary sources are mainly published literary works, both periodicals and booksConnects, biographically and stylistically, figures that have developed disparate reputationsTreats well-known, yet under-studied, popular authors: Jerome K. Jerome and P. G. Wodehouse especiallyTreats lesser-known or lesser-studied works by authors who attract more critical attention: J. M. Barrie, G. K. Chesterton, Robert Louis Stevenson and Israel ZangwillIntroduces humour into the discussion of feelings about readingPoking fun at Victorian social clubs became a way of asserting and redefining social belonging. At the turn of the century, amid intense social change, the club became the subject of sustained humour in the Idler magazine and its circle, from editors Jerome K. Jerome and Robert Barr to J. M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Barry Pain, Israel Zangwill, and even P. G. Wodehouse. Rather than doing away with the club itself, these authors embraced the paradoxes of the club and re-defined it as a space of possibility. Their humorous, fictional clubs aided the social mobility of the authors who created them, who in turn served as models for the readers who might never cross the literal thresholds of Clubland.

Pages: 288

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