ABSTRACT
In late Victorian and Edwardian society the concept of masculinity was entwined in a series of confusing yet mutually dependent relationships between athleticism, Empire, war and degeneration. John Buchan’s life and writings intersected profoundly with this debate. is chapter seeks to elaborate Buchan’s beliefs about masculinity by reference to his public life, his biographical and autobiographical writing and in particular the use of sport and the motif of the sportsman in his popular novels. It will suggest that Buchan’s adventure stories and his heroes were created in a deliberate attempt to articulate his beliefs to a wider audience. By developing Lowerson’s analysis of Buchan’s work as presenting a philosophy of life and behaviour to a middle-class readership, light may be shed not only on Buchan’s own personal and literary development but also on the broader social and cultural processes which shaped and re ected masculinity in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Positioning Buchan and his readership in this way may also contribute to the debate about the reception of modernism in post-war British cultural life.1
