Thomas Hughes was the author of the immensely popular Victorian novel
Tom Brown's Schooldays, which was set in Rugby School, the well-known
English "public school" that Hughes attended. In it, Hughes portrays the
ideals of that school. Rugby created a generation of leaders with a
sense of duty to their country; with a belief in the nobility of hard
work, honor, and selflessness; and with a determination to work for the
betterment of those less fortunate than themselves.
Hughes and many other "old boys" carried these values into their
post-school lives in Victorian England. Thomas Hughes became an advocate
for Britain's first labor unions and workingmen's colleges. He went on
to serve in Parliament, and eventually planted his Christian Socialist
ideals in the backwoods of Tennessee, where he established the utopian
community named Rugby after his beloved alma mater.
In Rugby, Tennessee, Hughes describes the then-new community and his
motivations in founding it. As Benita J. Howell points out in her lucid
and informative new introduction, the book represents an important
moment in late-Victorian English thought.
Hughes recounts the plight of England's "Will Wimbles," the
underemployed second sons of the gentry, to whom he hoped to give a
fresh start in Tennessee. Hughes also offers readers a vivid description
of Tennessee's northern Cumberland Plateau, including natural landmarks
that can still be seen. And his impressions of "Life in Tennessee," "The
Natives," and "The Negro Natives" reveal much about the Upland South on
the eve of industrialization. Written in part to convince British
investors that their project in America was making great progress,
Rugby, Tennessee, depicts a unique Utopian moment in this remote area of
Appalachian Tennessee-a moment whose legacy is justly celebrated to this
day.
Benita J. Howell is Professor of Anthropology Emerita at the University
of
Tennessee. She is the author of Folklife along the Big South Fork of
the
Cumberland River and is editor of Culture, Environment, and Conservation
in the Appalachian South.
