The X Club

As the author says, she has 'lived with these men for decades.' With meticulous and insightful research, she brings to life the complex lives and campaigning of the nine famous X more fully than ever before, revealing them with extraordinary clarity. The roles played by their wives are shown to be significant. Barton's scholarship maintains a delicate balance between group and individual biography and probes the intellectual and social contexts of 19th century science, challenging previous interpretations. It is a tremendous achievement. --Sophie Forgan, coauthor of Urban Modernity: Cultural Innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution In Victorian Britain, no one worked more tirelessly or creatively to make science part of public culture than the nine members of the X Club. Ruth Barton's magisterial group biography gives us the men and their world in the richly rewarding detail we have long needed. From their diverse backgrounds and beginnings, to the complex challenges they faced, to the importance of friendship in meeting those challenges, we see close up how Thomas Huxley, Joseph Hooker, John Tyndall, and the others exercised power and influence in the service of a new, still influential vision of science and society. --Gregory Radick, author of The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate About Animal Language In her much anticipated book on the X Club, Ruth Barton sets out to draw a colorful and detailed picture of the scientific scene in London in the second half of the nineteenth century. Barton does not disappoint. Based on meticulous research, this is the definitive study of the small, exclusive dining club that tried to control British science in a quest for power and scientific authority. By writing a collective biography of the X Club that does not focus too much on Huxley or any other member, Barton provides a lively, balanced examination of the successes and failures of this fascinating collection of individuals bent on changing the face of modern science. --Bernard Lightman, author of Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences Having taught history, social-science methodology, and mathematics at universities in New Zealand and Australia, Ruth Barton is better equipped than most to tackle a group biography of the nine men with whom she has 'lived for decades'. . . . [Barton] takes a fresh approach to the hoary old question of 'science versus religion' in the 19th century . . . As the 137 pages of end matter attest, detail is 'crucial to the argument of this book'. Serious students of Victorian Christian thought should attend to the detail, while the general reader can enjoy the view, which is panoramic. --Church Times [Barton's] analysis is detailed, convincing and long awaited. --Geoscientist For decades in the late 1800s, nine scientific luminaries (among them biologist Thomas Henry Huxley and botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker) dined together as members of the 'X Club'. This socio-economically diverse group, formed in part to promote Charles Darwin's achievements, is a telling case study in the dynamics of Victorian class and science. Historian Ruth Barton's magisterial chronicle traces the careers of the X-men and their agile promotion of science; Huxley, in particular, emerges vividly as wily, belligerent, and obstructive to women entering science. --Nature