Category:The Gownsman

Title: The Gownsman

Editor: William Thackeray

Publisher: W.H. Smith

The Gownsman, formerly called The Snob, is a Cambridge-based student journal with major contributors that include William Makepeace Thackeray, William Williams, and W.H. Smith. The journal was originally called "The Snob" when it began publication in 1829 but then returned as "The Gownsman" after the Cambridge summer break. The publication only ran for a couple semesters but seemed to have been well-received. The Preface to The Gownsman quickly orients the reader to the tone of the journal with a unique disclaimer that reads, “it was suspected....that for the purpose of raising a transient laugh, the feelings of some persons would be heedlessly injured.” They continue to say that if the editors, by any “inadvertence,” have admitted “a line or a single word that has given pain to any individual or society, they [here] make a most humble and unequivocal apology” and hope that the offended “will find it in their good nature to forgive a fault, which is rather to be laid to the charge of the carelessness of youth, than to be accounted the proof of malevolence or ill-will."^[1] With this disclaimer in hand, The Gownsman begins its satirical and humorous sketches filled with self-proclaimed worn-out puns, old drinking jokes, and short poems. Though a “literary and scientific” journal, The Gownsman manages to maintain an air of playful youthfulness. The jokes, stories, and poems contained in the journal are particularly interesting as they give modern audiences a unique look into Cambridge college life in the 1830s and an additional understanding of the then-nascent career of William Thackeray.

Notes

1. ↑ "Waterloo Directory" (WD)

Submitted by: Stevens, Mallory: section 1, Winter 2013