London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in Late Victorian Britain

Using London's clubs as intellectual material for excavating British society in a period of intense transformation, Milne-Smith describes the way memberships in these societies served as markers in a complex system of institutions, social rituals, and habits to identify those whose social (and political) status carried heft and edge. Merit is one such concept. Since the merit which London clubs invented was neither uniform nor unitary, a study of club life allows us to see the ways in which they established different forms of authority, trust, and loyalty.