This book seeks to redress the balance of reporting in the sport's literature which has always favoured the activities of aquatic gentlemen at the public schools, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Henley Regatta and on the River Thames. This study focuses on the many who helped instigate and nurture the sport but who have been forgotten due to their not being associated with the elite of the sport.

Women are, and have been for many years, actively involved as players, supporters and co-ordinators in a range of sports and yet they are often missing from, or sidelined in, accounts of the history of these sports. Commenting first on the lack of inclusion of women in British sports history, the book goes on to examine aspects of women’s participation between the late-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century more broadly. It draws together some of the latest research undertaken by international scholars working in the field, and includes case studies about golf, bridge, rowing, figure skating and athletics. Between them the chapters demonstrate that women enjoyed mixed fortunes in sport. They positively highlight the scope of participation, as well as the complex interactions and responses that participation generated on account of life stage, social class, ethnicity and national identity across time and place. The incorporated methodological and theoretical approaches invite readers to reconsider existing sport historiography and point to new directions for future research. This book was first published as a special issue of Sport in History.

Volume one of a bibliography documenting all that has been written in the English language on the history of sport and physical education in Britain. It lists all secondary source material including reference works, in a classified order to meet the needs of the sports historian.

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.

This text explores recreational life during a period of economic and social change which was important to bring meaning and pleasure to the lives, often described as 'horrendous', of Victorian miners in the north-east of England.

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 sport of rowing has an illustrious history in the UK, managing to erect two controlling bodies by 1890 and taking its share of early and recent Olympic medals. This study traces the sport's influences, its champions, the amateur-versus-professional debate, and much more.

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.

It relates these documents to themes such as commercialism, professionalism, amateurism, recreationalism, and club fortunes and concludes with a discussion of the outlook for English sport in the next decade. This radical and unique approach to the development of sport in England provides a wider perspective than any other work, representing the views of ordinary participants and setting the various sporting activities in the context of their geographical, economic and social environments.