Cricket, Literary Culture and In-Groups in early twentieth-century Britain

This article posits that team sports can provide fresh insights into the place of leisure pursuits in the lives, networks and outlooks of historical literary figures. The social and literary role of the Authors Eleven, a cricket side of London-based writers active between 1899 and 1912, is explored through three case studies. George Ives was a pioneering campaigner for gay rights, who used cricket to bolster his homosexual identity. E.W. Hornung, creator of the famous cricketer-thief Raffles, saw cricket as the ideal training – and analogy – for imperialism. And P.G. Wodehouse – author of the Jeeves and Wooster stories – first made his name writing cricket-filled magazine pieces. All three writers saw their involvement in cricket – and particularly the in-group of the Authors team – as an essential component of their social status. The Authors Eleven thus presents a potent example of embodied sociability, whereby the specific nature of what these individuals were doing together (in this case, playing cricket) has a bearing on their friendships and their intellectual outlooks. As ways of understanding the lives and cultural significance of historical figures, the place of shared physical activity and embodied sociability need to be accorded much more importance than they have been hitherto.