ABSTRACT

Games obsessed the Victorian and Edwardian public schools. The obsession has become widely known as athleticism. When it appeared in 1981, this book was the first major study of the games ethos which dominated the lives of many Victorian and Edwardian public schoolboys. Written with Professor Mangan's customary panache, it has become a classic, the seminal work on the social and cultural history of modern sport.

chapter |9 pages

Prologue

part 1|86 pages

The Growth of the Ideology

chapter 1|9 pages

Reformation, Indifference and Liberty

chapter 2|21 pages

Licence, Antidote and Emulation

chapter 3|25 pages

Idealism, Idealists and Rejections

chapter 4|29 pages

Compulsion, Conformity and Allegiance

part 2|123 pages

The Forces of Ideological Consolidation

chapter 7|38 pages

Fez, ‘Blood' and Hunting Crop

The Symbols and Rituals of a Spartan Culture

chapter 8|28 pages

Play Up and Play the Game

The Rhetoric of Cohesion, Identity, Patriotism and Morality

chapter 2|13 pages

Epilogue