Mike Huggins

Vice and the Victorians explores the ways the Victorian world gave meanings to the word 'vice', and the role this complex notion played in shaping society. Mike Huggins provides a richer and more nuanced understanding of a term that, despite its vital importance to the Victorians, has thus far lacked a clear definition. Each chapter explores a different facet of vice. Firstly, the book seeks to define exactly what vice meant to the Victorians, exploring how the language of vice was used as a tool to beat down opposition and dissent. It considers the cultural geography and spatial dimensions of vice in the public and private spheres, before moving on to look at specific vices: the unholy trinity of drink, sex and gambling. Finally, it shifts from vice to virtue and the efforts of moral reformers, and reassesses the relationship between vice and respectability in Victorian life. In his lively and engaging discussion, Mike Huggins draws on a range of theory and exploits a wide variety of texts and representations from the periodical press, parliamentary reports and Acts, novels, obscene publications, paintings and posters, newspapers, sermons, pamphlets and investigative works. This will be an illuminating text for undergraduates studying Victorian Britain as well as anyone wishing to gain a more nuanced understanding of Victorian society.

Vice and the Victorians

John K. Walton

Redcar and Its Neighbours, 1919-1939

The Teesside Seaside Between the Wars

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book provides a detailed consideration of the history of racing in British culture and society, and explores the cultural world of racing during the interwar years. The book shows how racing gave pleasure even to the supposedly respectable middle classes and gave some working-class groups hope and consolation during economically difficult times. Regular attendance and increased spending on betting were found across class and generation, and women too were keen participants. Enjoyed by the royal family and controlled by the Jockey Club and National Hunt Committee, racing's visible emphasis on rank and status helped defend hierarchy and gentlemanly amateurism, and provided support for more conservative British attitudes. The mass media provided a cumulative cultural validation of racing, helping define national and regional identity, and encouraging the affluent consumption of sporting experience and a frank enjoyment of betting. The broader cultural approach of the first half of the book is followed by an exploration if the internal culture of racing itself.

Horseracing and the British, 1919–39

Jack Williams

A thorough, innovative yet entertaining and readable analysis of sport as an expression of the values and social relations of a nation. Covering the years between the two World Wars, the central place of sport in English life is brought into sharp focus, providing insight into issues of gender, class, religion and locality, ideas of morality, continuity and change, and what it meant to be English during this pivotal time. Themes include: the nature of sport and its place in national life how sport was portrayed in the media and through the sports stars of the age tradition and change in sport and in society gaining meaning from sport: the pursuit of pleasure, a moral code, and ideas of Englishness class, social conflict and social cohesion. This original and lucid study is ideal for students of sport and social history, and anyone with an interest in the social role of sport.

Between the Wars

Sport and the English, 1918-1939

J. A. Mangan

This irreverent and revisionist collection challenges the conventional view that middle-class Victorian leisure had a respectable and serious purpose and approach. It explores the more sinful and unrespectable Victorian male pleasures, demonstrating the complex interrelationships between such values as manliness, muscularity and machismo, or sensuality, virility and hedonism. It sheds light on the ways in which the public rhetoric of Victorian respectability could be rendered problematic by the practical pursuit of private pleasure. It shows that Victorian leisure was a much more contested cul.

Less Virtuous Victorians at Play

Disreputable Pleasures

Many of the sports that have spread across the world, from athletics and boxing to golf and tennis, had their origins in nineteenth-century Britain. They were exported around the world by the British Empire, and Britain's influence in the world led to many of its sports being adopted in other countries. (Americans, however, liked to show their independence by rejecting cricket for baseball.) The Victorians and Sport is a highly readable account of the role sport played in both Victorian Britain and its empire. Major sports attracted mass followings and were widely reported in the press. Great sporting celebrities, such as the cricketer Dr W.G. Grace, were the best-known people in the country, and sporting rivalries provoked strong loyalties and passionate emotions. Mike Huggins provides fascinating details of individual sports and sportsmen. He also shows how sport was an important part of society and of many people's lives.

Mike Huggins

About

Books

Join the club