| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

British Clubs and Societies, 1580–1800: The Origins of an Associational World. By Peter Clark. (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000. xviii, 516 pp. $98.00, ISBN 0-19-820376-4.)

For all his reputed hauteur, the true English gentleman was expected to be "clubbable." Yet across a wider reach of classes, the British (like Americans) have proved themselves a nation of joiners, as bell ringers or bowlers, philanthropists or reformers, Freemasons or Odd Fellows, cognoscenti or eccentrics. In this prodigiously well packed, engrossing, and important book, Peter Clark claims a new significance for the swarming world of voluntary associations as a vital social resource in Britain's passage to modernity. From London's Society of Dilettanti to Liverpool's Ugly Face Clubb (a selfelected visible minority), associational life generated fraternity, conferred identity, and built commercial and professional networks in an increasingly mobile and anonymous urbanizing society. Mutual aid societies formed the largest category of association, but common to all was a ritualized sociability, determinedly festive, often boozy, and almost exclusively masculine. By 1800, when this associational culture came of age, perhaps 1 in 3 males held membership. . . .

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