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Sports and sociability in Britain in the long eighteenth century
The age of Enlightenment was also an age of development of sporting and physical activities. This book aims to study the forms of sociability induced and defined by such activities in the eighteenth century. By bringing together archival work and textual analysis the book insists on the definitions and representations of sporting practices. These range from traditional pastimes such as hunting or archery, to more novel forms of recreation such as swimming or mountaineering. The book investigates the modes of association which were set in motion either through participation, or through various forms of spectatorship (ranging from watching to betting). Societies, associations, clubs and more informal gatherings characterized this burgeoning interest for sports. They provoked new interactions between individuals and the social group, new forms of distinction as well and transformed the apprehension of the natural world. Through a variety of case studies, the book provides an original perspective on the transformations of sociability in the eighteenth century. It integrates the findings of historical inquiry into groups and associations linked with sports as well as the analysis of the literary projections of such physical activities, notably by the Romantic poets from Thomson to Keats.
Introduction: Sports in the British world of the eighteenth century / Caroline Bertonèche and Alexis Tadié -- I. Sports and Social Practices -- Cockfighting, Associativity and English Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century / Mike Huggins -- Blood Sports, Sociability, and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century England / Ben Jackson -- Archery and Sociability: The Royal Company of Archers in Edinburgh, 1775-1822 / Marion Amblard -- Pugilism, Popularity, and Cultural Appropriation in the Regency / John Whale -- Inventing the 'Noble Art': Boxing and the Taming of Violence (1740s-1790s) / Pierre Labrune and Kimberley Page-Jones -- II. Sports, Society, and the Natural World -- 'The quivering Nations sport': the Creation as work and play in James Thomson's Seasons / Laurent Folliot -- Swimming in the long eighteenth century / Alexis Tadié -- "Like spirit-winged chariots": Shelley and Recreational Sailing / Pauline Hortolland -- 'A group... of apparently aerial beings': Sociability and the British Summit in the long Eighteenth Century / Simon Bainbridge -- Between Solitude and Sociability: Mountaineering in Ann Radcliffe's The romance of the Forest (1791) / Claire Wrobel -- Climbing Mount Parnassus: Keats among the clouds / Meiko O'Halloran.
edited by Caroline Bertonèche and Alexis Tadié.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-265) and index.
Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment ; 2025:10