This book is a collection of essays and addresses, most of which were written and delivered over the past ten years, by John Tosh, one of the leading writers on the topic of Victorian masculinity today. Following a brief introduction and a theoretical section, labeled “Agendas,” are three sections, each of which reflects an aspect of the book's subtitle. The three chapters in part 2, “Changing Masculinities,” examine various types of masculinities over the course of a very long nineteenth century, from 1750 to 1914. Part 3, “Family,” contains two essays, one on middle-class fatherhood in the early part of the century and the second on the role of Methodism in the lives of three middle-class men whose lives spanned the nineteenth century. The final section, “Empire,” contains two essays published here for the first time, both of which apply a gender analysis to the attractions of empire over the course of the nineteenth century.

Although Tosh purports to work on masculinity, he (thankfully) works within the broader context of gender. He frequently acknowledges the usefulness of women's studies, which laid the theoretical and methodological groundwork for masculinity studies. Tosh's awareness that masculinity and femininity are relational constructs leads him to provide much relevant information about the development of feminism in the nineteenth century, paying particular attention to the ways in which, for example, women's legal gains and the emergence of the New Woman strongly challenged earlier notions of masculinity. This approach is useful because it demonstrates the development of masculinity in a larger social and cultural context.

It is in its examination of the evolution of masculine identities, however, that this collection is most valuable. Defining manliness as something that is achieved (in contrast to masculinity, a neutral term), Tosh shows the variety of ways in which different men sought to attain this sometimes elusive goal. Throughout, he demonstrates that there was no easy way to achieve manliness. For example, religion—in particular, Methodism—could reinforce paternal authority, or it could provide a man with a wife who found in religion a sanction for challenging her husband's priorities, as in the case of Sarah Holden. Likewise, the high value placed on domesticity throughout the nineteenth century could reduce a father's authority within the home as the mother was accorded the privileged place there, or it could increase his authority as head of the family.

Central to Tosh's argument is the contention that masculinity cuts across class lines, that men judge each other as men independently of other considerations. While that argument has the ring of truth, it is not always demonstrated: with the exception of chapter 8, on emigration in the first half of the century, this work focuses on middle-class men, with occasional references to working-class and aristocratic men. (It also focuses on English, rather than British, men.) Tosh notes the dearth of working-class sources; I would suggest as well covering a broader range of social classes would most likely have made this work unnecessarily complicated and would have diluted the argument. I merely wish that the title did not promise such a broad assessment of nineteenth-century Britain.

This work is plagued by some minor problems, some of which can be attributed to the fact that almost all of these chapters were originally addresses or essays. Some facts, such as the early death of Kitchner's mother, are repeated, and we twice hear W. T. Stead's comment to Edward Carpenter that “a few more cases like Oscar Wilde's and we should find the freedom of comradeship now possible to men seriously impaired” (39, 115; the second reference completes the phrase by adding, “to the detriment of the race”). A slightly more annoying problem of repetition is the repetition of key ideas, such as that gender is relational or domesticity lost its appeal for men as the century wore on, as though for the first time. This repetition occurs even in the last two essays on imperialism, both of which were written for this volume. Both essays argue that “empire was seen as a projection of masculinity” (193), but the second of these two essays, chapter 9 (“Manliness, Masculinities and the New Imperialism, 1880–1900”), does not acknowledge that this idea has already been explored in detail in the previous chapter. Given the origins of the book, I do not know how to remedy the problem, at least in the first two-thirds of the book, but it catches the reader up short each time.

With the exception of the last two essays on empire, those who have read Tosh's recent A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven, CT, 1999) or his contributions to the volume he edited with Michael Roper, Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London, 1991) will be familiar with the arguments here. For example, the argument made at greater length in A Man's Place, that by the late nineteenth century domesticity was becoming less appealing to middle-class Englishmen, is made more briefly in chapter 5, “Middle-Class Masculinities in the Era of the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1860–1914.” A related argument, that fatherhood was less appealing and less useful as a way of achieving a masculine identity, which is put forth at greater length in A Man's Place, is found in chapter 6, “Authority and Nurture in Middle-Class Fatherhood: The Case of Early and Mid-Victorian England.” Nevertheless, this would be a useful collection for an upper-level university class on nineteenth-century England. Notwithstanding that its subject is masculinity, it would also be a useful text for a class on gender in nineteenth-century England, for there is enough basic information about women that, with some fill-in lectures by the instructor, this book would work. The main stumbling block to ordering this book for what seems to be its intended audience of advanced undergraduates is its price: $32 is a bit high for a paperback collection of previously published essays.