Sloane Rangers, Preppies, and other Subcultures

The Official Preppy Handbook (1980) and Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (1982) became iconic publications on both sides of the Atlantic, not just for their bourgeois subjects, but runaway popular bestsellers. Both handbooks affectionately but pointedly parodied the lives of the wealthy but not rich, entitled but not titled, upper middle class cohorts and identities dubbed Preppy in the US and Sloane in the UK. Historians have, however, not read or used them much. They were considered too satirical and too throwaway to take seriously--insufficiently political for political historians and the wrong type of subculture for cultural historians. Yet as lifestyle guides, they offer valuable insights into the conservative boom of the 1980s--social handbooks to accompany the ideological ones of the New Right. And as hosts and provokers of multiple debates about class, taste, culture, education, leisure, careers, heritage, race, dress, food, consumerism, language, and more, they clearly touched a popular nerve. This book explores these debates as well as the origins, authorship, circulation, and reception of the handbooks and the fate of their subjects after their 1980s heyday. It assesses the sociology and geography of the Sloane Ranger and Preppy, contextualises the handbooks in terms of contemporary theory and asks questions about the meaning of their satirical tone, their vernacular languages, and whether Thatcher was a wannabee Sloane. The book contends that a reinterpretation of the period and of varieties of lived social conservatism and capital-C political Conservatism can be gleaned from understanding the popular salience of the indiscreet charms of the bourgeoise.