The English Gentleman: The Rise and Fall of an Ideal

Abstract

idea of gentleman is central to the English view of the world. It runs through and illuminates English history at least from the time of Chaucer's parfit gentil knight. For the Victorians, it provided a second religion which underpinned not only daily life, but the whole edifice of empire. What were the origins of this ideal, this code, this club? Philip Mason traces its development and transformation through the characters of Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Chesterfield, Jane Austen's Mr Knightley and Captain Wentworth, Lord Lonsdale, Trollope's Duke of Omnium and Captain Oates. He shows how the the sporting gentleman is distinct from the gentleman-scholar; and the Christian gentleman from the officer and gentleman; how a man may be an aristocrat and no gentleman, or humbly born and one of nature's gentlemen. In an epilogue, Mason demonstrates that the concept still flourishes in today's egalitarian times. Other titles by the author include Man, Race and Darwin, Patterns of Dominance, A Matter of Honour, Kipling, Skinner of Skinner's Horse and The Men Who Ruled India. He has also published seven novels under the name of Philip Woodruff.

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