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.

There has been an explosion in the quantity of sports history literature published in recent years, making it increasingly difficult to keep abreast of developments. The annual number of publications has increased from around 250 to 1,000 a year over the last decade. This is due in part to the fact that during the late 1980s and 90s, many clubs, leagues and governing bodies of sport have celebrated their centenaries and produced histories to mark this occasion and commemorate their achievements. It is also the result of the growing popularity and realisation of the importance of sport history research within academe. This international bibliography of books, articles, conference proceedings and essays in the English language is a one-stop for the sports historian to know what is new.

1994 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Annual Book Award An outstanding contribution to feminist analysis of sport from the nineteenth century to the present day. Jennifer Hargreaves views sport as a battle for control of the physical body and an important area for feminist intervention. Placing women at the centre of discussion, no other book is as comprehensive.

From the earliest "velocipedes" through the advent of the pneumatic tire to the rise of modern road and track competition, this history of the sport of bicycle racing traces its role in the development of bicycle technology between 1868 and 1903. Providing detailed technical information along with biographies of racers and other important personalities, the book explores this thirty-year period of early bicycle history as the social and technical precursor to later developments in the motorcycle and automobile industries.

British athletics in the era of Chariots of Fire is explored through the rediscovered life of amateur and professional runner and leading British coach, Alec Nelson. Though necessary for competitive success, professional coaches were kept firmly in their place by the socially elite athletes and administrators of the sport. The contradictions and hypocrisy within athletics, and the class-based antagonism between amateurism and professionalism, are central themes of this book. The relationship between professional trainers and amateur athletes and clubs is examined, and the resistance to change while British Olympic performances increasingly fell behind. The sporting world and its main personalities are brought to life through exploring the clubs Nelson coached (Cambridge University, the Army, the Achilles Club and various Olympic teams), the athletes he trained (Harold Abrahams, Douglas Lowe and Bob Tisdall among them) and the controversies over the methods and role of coaches. The book also brings to light a remarkable partnership which crossed the lines of social class, between Nelson and his mentor, Philip Noel-Baker, a prominent Olympian and politician who attempted to modernise British athletics.

Eric Reed examines the Tour de France's development as well as the event's global athletic, cultural, and commercial influences. He explores the behind-the-scenes growth of the Tour, while simultaneously chronicling France's role as a dynamic force in the global arena.

This book considers how Samoans embraced and reshaped the English game of cricket, recasting it as a distinctively Samoan pastime, kirikiti. Starting with cricket’s introduction to the islands in 1879, it uses both cricket and kirikiti to trace six decades of contest between and within the categories of ‘colonisers’ and ‘colonised.’ How and why did Samoans adapt and appropriate the imperial game? How did officials, missionaries, colonists, soldiers and those with mixed foreign and Samoan heritage understand and respond to the real and symbolic challenges kirikiti presented? And how did Samoans use both games to navigate foreign colonialism(s)? By investigating these questions, Benjamin Sacks suggests alternative frameworks for conceptualising sporting transfer and adoption, and advances understandings of how power, politics and identity were manifested through sport, in Samoa and across the globe.