What a Victorian Novel Teaches Us about Friendship and Civil Order - Front Porch Republic

What a Victorian Novel Teaches Us about Friendship and Civil Order - Front Porch Republic

America has a crisis of friendship, one visible in the decline of close friends, increasing levels of loneliness, and waning participation in clubs and associations. In our search for solutions, we might find unexpected guidance in Thomas Hughes’s Victorian novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857). Published during the golden period of economic prosperity that emerged two decades into Queen Victoria’s 63-year reign, Tom Brown’s Schooldays is concomit…