Matthew McCormack

I am an historian of Georgian Britain. I am mostly interested in the role of masculinity in this fascinating period of change in gender relations. In particular, I want to think about men in 'public' contexts, where historians usually take their presence for granted.

My first book, The Independent Man (recently reissued in paperback) explored citizenship in the long eighteenth century, and argued that debates about who was fit to exercise the vote were fundamentally concerned with gender. When the Whigs passed the Great Reform Act in 1832, they gave the vote to those who possessed specific 'manly' qualities, and sought to exclude women and certain other sorts of men.

I am also interested in the history of warfare in this period. My second book, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England, explores the history of citizen soldiering in the eighteenth century. It thinks about the role of masculinity in the English militia, both in terms of how it was represented in public discourse and visual culture, but also how it was experienced in more practical senses.