Idler's Club

Laura Kasson Fiss (she/her) is Research Assistant Professor in Humanities at Michigan Technological University. Her articles have appeared in Victorian Periodicals Review, The Cambridge Companion to Gilbert and Sullivan, and elsewhere.

Laura Fiss introduces us to the imagined community of a virtual club in "The Idler’s Club," a column in The Idler, and clubland novels by its key contributors: Arthur Conan Doyle, Jerome K. Jerome, Israel Zangwill, James Barrie, and the transitional figure P. G. Wodehouse. This deeply-researched study, like the understudied works it recovers, is spiced with humor and repays sustained attention.

• Introduction: Imagining Clubland Clubs and Print Culture The Idler’s Club Forms Humour and Sociability Chapter Descriptions Chapter 1. Club Chatter, Gossip, and Smoking: The Idler’s Club Column as a Reader’s Space Smoking as a Metaphor for Reading The Establishment of the ‘Idler’s Club’: A Close Environment Widening the Club The Reader in The Idler’s Club Chapter 2. The Pressroom and the Clubroom: Working Women and Idling Men in Jerome K. Jerome’s Tommy and Co. A Man’s View of Newspaperwomen ‘A New Species’ Androgyny and Good Humour Miss Ramsbotham The Subeditor’s Happy Endings ‘Why should not the paper as a whole appeal to her?’ Chapter 3. The Club Story and Social Mobility: Rules for Readers in Israel Zangwill and Barry Pain Misogyny or Misogamy? Rules for Bachelors (and Readers) No One Draws the Old Maid The Proposal Club In Which There are Surprisingly Few Actual Problems Gender Problems Failing at Failure The Pathos of Social Mobility Chapter 4. The Mysteries of Male Friendship: Uncovering the Club in Stevenson, Doyle, Chesterton, and Sayers From Cream Tarts to Suicide Baker Street vs. the Clubs Queer Trades, Queer City A Joke Made Horribly Real Conclusion Chapter 5. Through a Club Window Wistfully: J. M. Barrie and the Politics of Social Awkwardness The Scotch Humourist A Comedy of Anonymity A Highly Anti-Social Society Sociable Unsociability ‘The Pleasantest Club in London’ Unclubbability as Class Privilege Chapter 6. Idlers and Drones: P. G. Wodehouse and Twentieth-Century Class Confusion ‘Slip a Ferret into Any Good Club’ Calling Clubs’ Bluff Joking about Socialism The Butler and the Earl Clubs for Readers Conclusion: Mass Readership, Then and Now Appendix: The Numbers on Women in "The Idler’s Club" Methodology Discussion Conclusion Figures Bibliography Notes