Rakes, Highwaymen, and Pirates: The Making of the Modern Gentleman in the Eighteenth Century - Hardcover

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Erin Mackie is a professor of English at Syracuse University. She is author of Market à 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."

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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 be fully comprehended only 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.

"A richly rewarding volume that gains more than a little residual glamour from its popular subjects. The strength of the text, though, is in Mackie's incisive questioning of that glamour. This is not, finally, a book about pirates (or highwaymen, or rakes) so much as it is a study of our fascination with them."—Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies

"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

"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."—Eighteenth-Century Fiction

"In this well-researched study, Mackie makes a strong case for the inclusion of alternative, criminal masculinities in understanding the development of the modern English gentleman and patriarchy in the eighteenth century."—Journal of British Studies

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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 be fully comprehended only 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.

A richly rewarding volume that gains more than a little residual glamour from its popular subjects. The strength of the text, though, is in Mackie's incisive questioning of that glamour. This is not, finally, a book about pirates (or highwaymen, or rakes) so much as it is a study of our fascination with them.--Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies

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

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.--Eighteenth-Century Fiction

In this well-researched study, Mackie makes a strong case for the inclusion of alternative, criminal masculinities in understanding the development of the modern English gentleman and patriarchy in the eighteenth century.--Journal of British Studies