Walter Scott¹s Bannatyne Club, Elite Male Associational Culture, and the Making of Identities

Examination of the choice of George Bannatyne (1545–1607/8) as titular patron for the antiquarian printing society founded by Sir Walter Scott, the Bannatyne Club (1823–1861), casts new light on the elite male associational culture of the gentleman’s club at a moment of transition from amateur scholarship to the professional academic work of universities and learned societies. In celebrating Bannatyne, the Club engages in self-conscious practices of myth-making that illuminate the members’ sense of their own relationship to the past, and of the Club’s function in endorsing a distinctive Scottish identity in the context of political union. Analysis of a unique collection of papers compiled by an ordinary club member, James Nairne, offers evidence of the complex intersection of personal and scholarly motivations at work in the antiquarian printing club, and of the significance of the past in shaping personal and collective identities.