Boston Book Bums

Well, we are racing towards the end of 2011. With the weeks ticking away, we decided to sit down and rank our top ten reviewed books of 2011. So, over the next five weeks, we’ll count down our favorite books of this past year.

Please enjoy this look back and countdown of the Boston Book Bums Top 10 of ’11.

Coming in at Number 10…

With the rise of steampunk and a revived interest by 21st century readers in things Victoriana, a new book Masculinity, Crime & Self Defence in Victorian Literature might prove interesting.

As long time devotees of the period, we looked forward to Emelyne Godfrey’s examination of an unchecked topic, violence in real world England and its reflection in literature of the time.

Godfrey points out very early in her work that crime during the mid-19th century in London was low. She slowly pieces together periodicals, fiction and news of the day to explain that sometimes the fear felt by Londoners was more artificial than genuine.

She illuminates the perceived wave of  ‘garotting’ attacks on London residents in the 1850s, where thugs would work in teams to choke and rob a pedestrian, and how periodicals stoked the panic.

Balancing examination of period literature, like the Palliser novels or the Sherlock Holmes canon, Godfrey produces interesting portraits of the weapons, defenses and psychologies utilized by Victorian era gentlemen. From studding anti-garroting collars, to belt buckle pistols, canes and even cudgles, Godfrey delves into the tools of defense and how they expressed masculinity  in the era. Interestingly, guns were the pinnacle of aggression and rarely utilized by heroes of fiction, even though they captured the imagination of men of the day.

One of the book’s continuing themes is the repressed aggressive instincts of Victorian men, seeking ways to explore physical heights but at the same time mastering one’s desires and become a gentleman at his pinnacle. Competing desires for masculine vigor and intelligent reserve are well explored by Godfrey.

Also, Godfrey spends a smart length examining the fascination with Asian martial arts and how, when they were brought to the UK, were manifested by the little known discipline of Bartitsu. Some who saw the most recent big screen adaptation of Sherlock Holmes scoffed at the pugilistic turn. However, as Godfrey points out, Holmes was a practitioner of bartitsu and it was a key element of crafting the thinking man’s paladin.

Also, Godfrey does leverage Freudian themes, in particular when it comes to weapons/sexuality, but does not bog down the work.

Overall Masculinity, Crime and Self Defence in Victorian Literature is a well constructed voyage into an unexplored subject on the collision of crime, masculinity and literature.

Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature by Emelyne Godfrey was received for free by the Boston Book Bums

Tags: book bloggers top ten list, book reviews of 2011, top 10 list of books, Top Books of 2011, top books of the year