| Review | Journal of Social History, 41.1

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 41.1 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Oxbridge Men: British Masculinity and the Undergraduate Experience, 1850–1920. By Paul R. Deslandes (Bloomington & Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 2005. ix plus 319 pp.).

Oxbridge Men is a study of undergraduate masculinity at Cambridge and Oxford between 1850 and 1920. It explores the formation of Britain's professional elite: the future politicians and civil servants; colonial administrators and lawyers; schoolmasters, university lecturers, and clergy. Drawing chiefly from undergraduate reviews and magazines, Paul Deslandes seeks to give voice to the undergraduates themselves. His goal is to understand how the masculine culture of Oxford and Cambridge fostered, perpetuated, and defended an elite, a masculine sensibility complete with an esprit de corps among these young men as well a firm sense of superiority. What it meant for these privileged, upper middle class males "to be a man" is the central query of this study, and Deslandes is strongest at describing what he sees as the cultural meanings of masculinity for the Oxbridge men at the turn of the century. His central argument is less apparent and, in the end, what we are left with is a very fine description and analysis of undergraduate life at Oxford and Cambridge. But the implications of the competitive, elitist masculinity that Deslandes portrays, as it entered the worlds of politics, finance, imperialism, education, and the church, are left to our imagination.

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