Queering the Subversive Stitch: Men and the Culture of Needlework

The history of mens needlework has been taboo, but Joseph McBrinn's book reveals that men have threaded their own needles, stitched and knitted, woven lace, handmade clothes, and other textiles since medieval times. It argues that needlework by male artists and anonymous tailors, sailors, soldiers, convalescents, paupers, prisoners, hobbyists, and boys deserves to be looked at again, as it contests, resists, and subverts the constrictive ideals of modern masculinity.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 08 April 2021
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

The history of men's needlework has long been considered a taboo subject, but this groundbreaking book is the first to document and critically interrogate a range of needlework made by men. It reveals that since medieval times, men have threaded their own needles, stitched and knitted, woven lace, handmade clothes, and other kinds of textiles, and generally delighted in the pleasures and possibilities offered by all sorts of needlework. Only since the dawn of the modern age, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, did needlework become closely aligned with new ideologies of the feminine. Since then, mens needlework has been read not just as feminising but as queer. In this groundbreaking study, Joseph McBrinn argues that needlework by male artists as well as anonymous tailors, sailors, soldiers, convalescents, paupers, prisoners, hobbyists and a multitude of other men and boys deserves to be looked at again. Drawing on a wealth of examples of mens needlework, as well as visual representations of the male needleworker, in museum collections, from artists papers and archives, in forgotten magazines and specialist publications, popular novels and childrens literature, and even in the history of photography, film and television, he surveys and analyses many of the instances in which "needlemen" have contested, resisted and subverted the constrictive ideals of modern masculinity. This audacious, original, carefully researched and often amusing study demonstrates the significance of needlework by men in understanding their feelings, agency, identity and history.

Weight: 468g
Dimension: 156 x 234 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781472578044