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Dent, J. B.; Blackie, Malcolm

doi:10.1007/978-94-011-6373-6_7

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“…As W. J. Loftie writes in In and Out of London: or, the Half-Holidays of a Town Clerk (1875), Dent resurrected his Camelot series in 1904. 111 One of Mr. Lucton's first acts as a bona fide rambler is the purchase of a classical reprint of the two volumes of Malory's Morte d'Arthur, at which moment he sees himself as a modern Sir Uwaine (which plays on the fact that Lucton's first name is Owen), traveling through deep valleys to rescue a fair maiden. Richard Easy also becomes mesmerized by the world of King Alfred, transported through the landscape and folk legend into antiquity, carrying forever with him the "fair rich Vale, and the glorious old Hill … and all the memories of the slaying of dragons, and of great battles with the Pagan."…”

Section: An English Heritagementioning

confidence: 99%

Ruralism, Masculinity, and National Identity: The Rambling Clerk in Fiction, 1900–1940

Bishop¹

2015

J. Br. Stud.

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This article examines the place of the literary lower-middle-class clerk in the English landscape between ca. 1900 and 1940. It draws attention to "clerical literature"-as typified in works by Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, and Shan Bullock-and, more specifically, a subgenre that signposts the emergent interest in getting "back to the land." At the heart of this subgenre of "rambling fiction," the male clerical protagonist not only engages with the natural landscape on a journey through rural England but also explores notions of masculinity, heritage, and national identity. By focusing on middlebrow works, largely those written by former clerks themselves, this article argues that clerks were pioneers in drawing connections between a re-masculating exposure to the great outdoors-necessary for suburban, domesticated, office workers-and an appreciation of a particular palimpsest of England's history. In doing so, the clerk helped to popularize the continued association of medievalism, the South of England, and the rural "idyll." I n 1934, Victor Canning published the first of what would become a series of novels about Mr. Edgar Finchley. The inimitable hero of this popular middlebrow series was, like Canning, a clerk-a "neatly clad, harmless-looking little man." 1 In Mr. Finchley Discovers His England, we read of the adventures that transform this meek "little" clerk into a rugged and masculine explorer. This discovery of "his" England offers the reader two parallel journeys: one into the identity of the male city clerk; and the second into the heart of England itself. The novel celebrates the pinnacle of two distinct, yet connected, movements: a genre I loosely term "clerkly literature" and emergent interest in rambling as a leisure pursuit. This article explores the proliferation of "neatly clad, harmless-looking little [men]" in middlebrow British fiction of the early twentieth century, in order to understand the cultural implications of the male clerk's forays into the rural landscape. In doing so, it contributes to discussions about masculinity, class, leisure, heritage, and the role of landscape in the formation of national identity. Recent historiography focuses on the clerk in what is deemed his "natural" habitat-the office. 2

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Section: An English Heritagementioning

confidence: 99%

Ruralism, Masculinity, and National Identity: The Rambling Clerk in Fiction, 1900–1940

Bishop¹

2015

J. Br. Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Model-Application

Cited by 1 publication

References 11 publications

Ruralism, Masculinity, and National Identity: The Rambling Clerk in Fiction, 1900–1940

Ruralism, Masculinity, and National Identity: The Rambling Clerk in Fiction, 1900–1940

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