The Pressroom and the Clubroom: Working Women and Idling Men in Jerome K. Jerome’s Tommy and Co.

Jerome K. Jerome and Robert Barr, the Idler’s editors, each wrote a novel about women journalists that presents the profession as much more fun and accessible than do their female Idler colleagues, such as Ella Hepworth Dixon and Evelyn Sharp. The eponymous Tommy achieves surprising gender fluidity for the period, especially from a politically middle-of-the-road figure such as Jerome. Her gender non-conformity is what makes her the centre of the “company,” which contains a number of professional women. Jerome and Barr both struggle to reconcile their professional women with the marriage plot.