One is the charismatic 'Jack of all trades' who can play the guitar, sing his way into your heart, be the cyber-wiz next door and also charm the ladies. The other is the near-legendary 'Master of one', the economic wizard who shook the very foundations of the political system of Goa. Jack has the sizzling fashion diva Samantha by his side, while Master has soul mate Sakshi, his pillar of support. What happens when the flamboyant college drop-out Jack meets the indomitable Master? Friendship, fun, craziness or a battle to the finish? All the jacks and masters of town, get ready for the ride of your lifetime. With no rules and no limits, this one's for glory. Find out who will come out on top. Flamboyance or excellence. Folk hero or cult figure. Jack or Master.

"Friendship by its very nature consists in loving rather than in being loved. In other words, friendship consists in being a friend, not in having a friend; in giving one's affection unselfishly and unswervingly to another, not in being the object of another's affection, or in reciprocating such an affection...Friendship-love, as a love that is unselfish, uncraving, ever out-going, and ever on-going, is in its very nature divine love. It is such love as God gives, and as man ought to give to God. It is such love as man should give to his fellow-man for God's sake." - H.C. Trumball "Our best friends are those whose company most makes us afraid to sin. These friends are rare and to be valued like solid gold." - Maurice Roberts

Carolyn Oulton recovers the strategies nineteenth-century authors used to justify the ideal of same-sex romantic friendship and the anxieties these strategies reveal. Informed by recent insights into the erotic potential of such relationships, but focused on romantic friendship as an independent and fully formulated ideal, Oulton departs from other critics who view romantic friendship as either nebulous and culturally naive or an invocation of homoerotic responsiveness. By considering both male and female friendships, Oulton uncovers surprising parallels between them in novels and poetry by authors such as Dickens, Tennyson, Disraeli, Charlotte Brontë, and Braddon. Oulton also examines conduct manuals, periodicals, and religious treatises, tracing developments from mid-century to the fin de siècle, when romantic friendship first came under serious attack. Her book is a persuasive challenge to those who view mid-Victorian England, existing in a state of blissful pre-Freudian innocence, as unproblematically accommodating of passionate same-sex relationships.

Cedric C. Brown combines the study of literature and social history in order to recognize the immense importance of friendship bonds to early modern society. Drawing on new archival research, he acknowledges a wide range of types of friendship, from the intimate to the obviously instrumental, and sees these practices as often co-terminous with gift exchange. Failure to recognize the inter-connected range of a friendship spectrum has hitherto limited the adequacy of some modern studies of friendship, often weighted towards the intimate or gendered-related issues. This book focusses both on friendships represented in imaginative works and on lived friendships in many textual and material forms, in an attempt to recognize cultural environments and functions. In order to provide depth and coherence, case histories have been selected from the middle and later parts of the seventeenth century. Nevertheless many kinds of bond are recognized, as between patron and client, mentor and pupil, within the family, within marriage, in courtship, or according to fashionable refined friendship theory. Both humanist and religious values systems are registered, and friendships are configured in cross-gendered and same-sex relationships. Theories of friendship are also included. Apart from written documents, the range of 'texts' extends to keepsakes, pictures, funerary monument and memorial garden features. Figures discussed at length include Henry More and the Finch/Conway family, John Evelyn, Jeremy Taylor, Elizabeth Carey/Mordaunt, John Milton, Charles Diodati, Cyriac Skinner, Dorothy Osborne/Temple, William Temple, Lord Arlington, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, and Katherine Phillips and her circle, especially Anne Owen/Trevor and Sir Charles Cotterell.