Erin Mackie explores the shared histories of the modern polite English gentleman and other less respectable but no less celebrated eighteenth-century masculine types: the rake, the highwayman, and the pirate. Mackie traces the emergence of these character types to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when traditional aristocratic authority was increasingly challenged. She argues that the development of the modern polite gentleman as a male archetype can only be fully comprehended when considered alongside figures of fallen nobility, which, although criminal, were also glamorous enough to reinforce the same ideological order. In Evelina's Lord Orville, Clarissa's Lovelace, Rookwood's Dick Turpin, and Caleb Williams's Falkland, Mackie reads the story of the ideal gentleman alongside that of the outlaw, revealing the parallel lives of these seemingly contradictory characters. Synthesizing the histories of masculinity, manners, and radicalism, Rakes, Highwaymen, and Pirates offers a fresh perspective on the eighteenth-century aristocratic male.

The topic is lively, the writing clear, and the argument persuasive. Bringing together histories of criminality, of gender, and of manners cuts across the period in a new way that promises to produce lively debate. -- James Thompson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

About the Author
Erin Mackie is an associate professor of English at Syracuse University. She is author of Market a la Mode: Fashion, Commodity, and Gender in "The Tatler" and "The Spectator," also published by Johns Hopkins, and editor of The Commerce of Everyday Life: Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator .

Reviews
The book impresses with its attentive close readings of important texts, and makes a valuable contribution to gender studies of eighteenth-century Britain. Times Literary Supplement 2009 An engaging study of elite modes of early modern criminality... A richly rewarding volume. -- Ingrid Ranum Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies 2010 Erin Mackie is to be congratulated on the range, scholarship, and critical perception in her study of some disquieting resemblances between deviant masculine types and perfect gentleman. -- Carolyn D. Williams Eighteenth-Century Fiction 2010 Opens up new avenues for thinking about masculinity, gender, and authority in the long eighteenth century. -- Hal Gladfelder 1650-1850 2010



Book Information
ISBN 9780801890888
Author Erin Mackie
Format Hardback
Page Count 248
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 499g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 21mm