Sport And The English Middle Classes 1870 1914

This book examines the phenomena which explain the boom in sport among the middle classes in late Victorian England. The author focuses on the extent to which sport became an agent of the development of the middle classes and an instrument of their self-definition. The book does not set out to explain the making of the English middle classes; rather, it examines a significant part of that making.

A selection of essays exploring the role of social institutions and political, economic and technological change in shaping the sport of middle class Victorians and Edwardians.

This five volume set is a comprehensive collection of primary sources on sports in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. At the beginning of the period few sports were regulated, but by the outbreak of the First World War organized sports had become an integral part of British cultural, social and economic life. Specialist Martin Polley has collected articles from a wide range of journals including "Blackwood's Magazine,"" Nineteenth Century," "Fortnightly Review" and "Contemporary Review," all of which reveal changing middle-class attitudes to sports. The five volumes cover the varieties of sports being promoted, sports and education, commercial and financial aspects, sports and animals and the globalization of sports through empire.

First published in 2004. This five-volume major work is a comprehensive collection of primary sources which examine changing attitudes to sport in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. At the beginning of the period few sports were regulated, but by the outbreak of the First World War organized sport had become an integral part of British cultural, social and economic life. Martin Polley has collected articles from a wide range of journals including Blackwood's Magazine, Nineteenth Century, Fortnightly Review and Contemporary Review, which reveal changing middle-class attitudes to sport. The five volumes cover the varieties of sport being promoted, sport and education, commercial and financial aspects of sport, sport and animals and the globalization of sport through empire. Volume I includes the Varieties of Sport.

The nineteenth century was a golden age in British sports. Not only were sports immensely popular, but they began to assume the forms and qualities that still characterise them today. Moreover, the latter part of the century saw a significant participation in sports by women, and this book provides the first overall examination of this early development and the social changes that it helped to bring about. Since women’s entry into sports was chiefly a consequence of the campaign for better female education, the book begins with an account of sports at the Oxbridge women’s colleges, at the girls' public schools and at the new women’s physical training colleges. It then examines team sports such as hockey, lacrosse, and cricket and individual sports such as tennis, golf and cycling. Other chapters discuss the medical attitudes and prejudices toward women’s participation in sports and the role of sports in changing female dress.

Tells the story of the changing relationship between sport and religion from 1800 to the present day Both religion and sport stir deep emotions, shape identities, and inspire powerful loyalties. They have sometimes been in competition for people's resources of time and money, but can also be mutually supportive. We live in a world where sport seems to be everywhere. Not only is there saturation media coverage but governments extol the benefits of sport for nation and individual, and in 2019 the Church of England appointed a Bishop for Sport. The religious world has not always looked so kindly on sport. In the early nineteenth century, Evangelical Christians led campaigns to ban sports deemed cruel, brutal or disorderly. But from the 1850s Christian and other religious leaders turned from attacking 'bad' sports to promoting 'good' ones. The pace of change accelerated in the 1960s, as commercialization of sport intensified and Sunday sport became established, while the world of religion was transformed by increasing secularization, a resurgent Evangelicalism, and the growth of a multi-faith society. This is the first book to tell this story, and while its principal focus is on Christianity, there is additional coverage of Judaism and Islam, as there is of those - from Victorian sporting gentry to present-day football fans and marathon runners - for whom sport is itself a religion.

Challenging the respectable image of Victorian society, this irreverent, revisionist collection explores the sinful side of middle-class Victorian leisure, highlighting the problematic relationship between public respectability and private pleasure.

2001 North American Society for Sports History Book of the Year This volume studies the formative period of racing between 1790 and 1914. This was a time when, despite the opposition of a respectable minority, attendance at horse races, betting on horses, or reading about racing increasingly became central leisure activities of much of British society.