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, angling, 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 characterised 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. It supplements work done by scholars on the cultures of sport in the early modern period, which has not addressed systematically the (trans)formations of sociability induced by these activities.