Ben Knights is also the author of "The Idea of Clerisy in the Nineteenth Century", "From Reader to Reader: Theory, Text and Practice in the Study Group" and "The Listening Reader: Fiction and Poetry for Counsellors and Psychotherapists".

The great bulk of work on gender in fiction and literature has reflected feminist concerns and focused on women authors. This book attempts to extend the contemporary preoccupation with representations of gender into the terrain of masculinity and male writing. Drawing on work in both the social sciences and humanities, it explores the narrative representation of masculinity in selected twentieth-century fictions ranging from classic texts by Lawrence and Conrad to novels by John Fowles, Graham Swift, David Leavitt and others.