Club Talk: Gossip, Masculinity and Oral Communities in Late Nineteenth‐Century London

2009/03/13 by Amy Milne‐Smith · 33 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · Psychology · #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Cultural History and Identity Formation #Gender Roles and Identity Studies #Gossip #Masculinity #Elite #Pleasure #Club #Insider #Sociology #Memoir #Gender studies #Media studies #Aesthetics #History #Law #Political science #Art #Art history #Politics #Psychology

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1468-0424.2009.01536.x

published in Gender & History 21(1), 86-106 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2009/03/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Gossip is not only a guilty pleasure; it is also an important tool of social control. Nowhere is this more evident than in the nineteenth‐century gentlemen's clubs of London. This article looks at the private lives of elite men whose gossip helped shape class and gender ideals. Archival documents, private memoirs and periodical literature provide both an insider and outsider vision of a very private world. Looking at how men gossiped points to codes of gentlemanly behaviour, the importance of homosocial life, and the place of oral culture in a modern, literate age.

Cited by

• Gentlemen's club [wikipedia]

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